BY    RICHARD    LE  GALLIENNE. 


The  Religion  of  a  Literary  Man  (Religio 
Scriptoris).  I2mo,  cloth,  $1.00. 

"  Probably  the  sunniest  book  on  religion  ever 
published." — London  Star. 

"The  best  prose  he  has  yet  written,  best  in 
its  sustained  and  equal  excellence  throughout. 
It  stoutly  sets  its  face  against  pestilent  modern 
affectations  of  artistic  license  and  personal  licen- 
tiousness, against  the  claim  to  be  unmoral,  and 
the  pretence  of  being  blase  ;  it  appeals  to  the 
sane  emotions,  to  natural  wonder  and  pity,  and 
humility,  and  humor." — Academy,  London. 

"...  The  book  is  certainly  a  remark- 
able one,  and  we  urge  our  readers  not  to  trust 
to  any  second-hand  account,  but  to  make  them- 
selves acquainted  with  its  contents  by  the  ancient 
method  of  perusal." — London  Speaker. 


Prose  Fancies 

I2mo,  cloth,  $1.00.      Similar  in  general  style  to 
The  Religion  of  a  Literary  Man. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS,  PUBLISHERS 

NEW  YORK   AND   LONDON 


COPYRIGHT,  1894 

BY  G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

Entered  at  Stationers'  Hall,  London 

BY  RICHARD  LK  GALLIENNE 


Stack 
Annex 


TO 

MY  DEAR   WIFE 
MY  PROSE  FOR  HER   POETRY 

IN   MEMORY 

OF  TWO   HAPPY   YEARS 

OCTOBER  22,  1891 

DECEMBER  6 

1893 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

A  SPRING  MORNING, I 

A  CONSPIRACY  OF  SILENCE,    ....  IO 

LIFE  IN  INVERTED  COMMAS,  .        .        .        .  1 8 

FRACTIONAL  HUMANITY,        ....  28 

THE  WOMAN'S  HALF-PROFITS,         ...  35 

GOOD  BISHOP  VALENTINE,      ....  46 

IRRELEVANT  PEOPLE, 53 

THE  DEVILS  ON  THE  NEEDLE,        ...  62 

POETS  AND  PUBLISHERS,        .        .        .        .  71 

APOLLO'S  MARKET, 88 

THE 'GENIUS'  SUPERSTITION,        ...  96 

A  BORROWED  SOVEREIGN,       ....  103 

ANARCHY  IN  A  LIBRARY,             .           .           .           .  Ill 

THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  '  LIMITED  EDITIONS,'      .  IIQ 

A  PLEA  FOR  THE  OLD  PLAYGOER,    .           .           .  126 


vi  CONTENTS 


PAGE 


THE  MEASURE  OF  A  MAN,          ....  132 

THE  BLESSEDNESS  OF  WOMAN,          ...  141 

VIRAGOES  OF  THE  BRAIN,          ....  148 

THE  EYE  OF  THE  BEHOLDER,  .           .           .           .  156 

TRANSFERABLE  LIVES, 164 

THE  APPARITION  OF  YOUTH,   .           .           .           .  170 
THE  PATHETIC  FLOURISH,         .           .           .           .178 

A  TAVERN  NIGHT, 184 

SANDRA  BELLONI'S  PINEWOOD,         .           .           .  IQO 

WHITE  SOUL, 198 


A   SPRING   MORNING 


SPRING  puts  the  old  pipe  to  his  lips  and 
blows  a  note  or  two.  At  the  sound,  little 
thrills  pass  across  the  wintry  meadows. 
The  bushes  are  dotted  with  innumerable 
tiny  sparks  of  green,  that  will  soon  set  fire 
to  the  whole  hedgerow  ;  here  and  there  they 
have  gone  so  far  as  those  little  tufts  which 
the  children  call  'bread  and  cheese.'  A 
gentle  change  is  coming  over  the  grim 
avenue  of  the  elms  yonder.  They  won't 
relent  so  far  as  to  admit  buds,  but  there 
is  an  unmistakable  bloom  upon  them,  like  the 
promise  of  a  smile.  The  rooks  have  known 
it  for  some  weeks,  and  already  their  Jews' 
market  is  in  full  caw.  The  more  com- 
plaisant chestnut  dandles  its  sticky  knobs. 
A 


2  PROSE    FANCIES 

Soon  they  will  be  brussels-sprouts,  and  then 
they  will  shake  open  their  fairy  umbrellas. 
So  says  a  child  of  my  acquaintance.  The 
water-lilies  already  poke  their  green  scrolls 
above  the  surface  of  the  pond,  a  few  butter- 
cups venture  into  the  meadows,  but  daisies 
are  still  precious  as  asparagus.  The  air 
is  warm  as  your  love's  cheek,  golden  as 
canary.  It  is  all  a-clink  and  a-glitter,  it 
trills  and  chirps  on  every  hand.  Some- 
where close  by,  but  unseen,  a  young  man  is 
whistling  at  his  work  ;  and,  putting  your  ear 
to  the  ground,  you  shall  hear  how  the  earth 
beneath  is  alive  with  a  million  little  beating 
hearts.  C'est  Vheure  exquise. 

Presently  along  the  road  comes  slowly, 
and  at  times  erratically,  a  charming  proces- 
sion. Following  the  fashion,  or  even  setting 
it,  three  weeks  since  yon  old  sow  budded. 
From  her  side,  recalling  the  Trojan  horse, 
sprang  suddenly  a  little  company  of  black- 
and-tan  piglets,  fully  legged  and  snouted  for 
the  battle  of  life.  She  is  taking  them  with 
her  to  put  them  to  school  at  a  farm  two  or 
three  miles  away.  So  I  understand  her. 
They  surround  her  in  a  compact  body,  ever 


A    SPRING    MORNING          3 

moving  and  poking  and  squeaking,  yet  all 
keeping  together.  As  they  advance  slowly, 
she  towering  above  her  tiny  bodyguard,  one 
thinks  of  Gulliver  moving  through  Lilliput ; 
and  there  is  a  touch  of  solemnity  in  the 
procession  which  recalls  a  mighty  Indian 
idol  being  carried  through  the  streets,  with 
people  thronging  about  its  feet.  How  deli- 
cately she  steps,  lest  she  hurt  one  of  the  little 
limbs  !  And,  meanwhile,  mark  the  driver — 
for  though  the  old  pig  pretends  to  ignore  any 
such  coercion,  as  men  believe  in  free-will, 
yet  there  is  a  fate,  a  driver,  to  this  idyllic 
domestic  company.  But  how  gentle  is  he 
too  !  He  never  lets  it  be  seen  that  he  is 
driving  them.  He  carries  a  little  switch, 
rather,  it  would  appear,  for  form's  sake ;  for 
he  seldom  does  more  with  it  than  tickle  the 
gravely  striding  posteriors  of  the  quaint 
little  people.  He  is  wise  as  he  is  kind, 
for  he  knows  that  he  is  driving  quicksilver. 
The  least  undue  coercion,  the  least  sudden 
start,  and  they  will  be  off  like  spilled 
marbles,  in  eleven  different  directions.  Some- 
times occasion  arises  for  prompt  action : 
when  the  poet  of  the  family  dreams  he 


4  PROSE    FANCIES 

discerns  the  promised  land  through  the 
bottom  of  a  gate,  and  is  bent  on  squeezing 
his  way  under,  and  the  demoralisation  of 
the  whole  eleven  seems  imminent.  Then, 
unconsciously  applying  the  wisdom  of  Solo- 
mon, the  driver  deals  a  smart  flick  to  the 
old  mother.  Seeing  her  move  on,  and 
reflecting  that  she  carries  all  the  provisions 
of  the  party,  her  children  think  better  of 
their  romance,  and  gambol  after  her,  taking 
a  gamesome  pull  at  her  teats  from  high 
spirits. 

The  man  never  seems  to  get  angry  with 
them.  He  is  smiling  gently  to  himself  all 
the  time,  as  he  softly  and  leisurely  walks 
behind  them.  Indeed,  wherever  this  moving 
nursery  of  young  life  passes,  it  awakens 
tenderness.  The  man  who  drove  the  gig 
so  rapidly  a  little  way  off  suddenly  slows 
down,  and,  with  a  sympathetic  word,  walks 
his  horse  gingerly  by.  Every  pedestrian 
stops  and  smiles,  and  on  every  face  comes 
a  transforming  tenderness,  a  touch  of  almost 
motherly  sweetness.  So  dear  is  young  life 
to  the  eye  and  heart  of  man. 

A  few  weeks  hence  these  same  pedestrians 


A    SPRING    MORNING          5 

will  pass  these  same  pigs  with  no  emotion, 
beyond,  possibly,  that  produced  by  the 
sweet  savour  of  frying  ham.  Their  naivete, 
their  charming  baby  quaintness,  will  have 
departed  for  ever.  Their  features,  as  yet 
but  roguishly  indicated,  will  have  become 
set  and  hidebound  ;  their  soft  little  snouts 
will  be  ringed,  and  hard  as  a  fifth  hoof; 
their  dainty  little  ears — veritable  silk  purses 
— will  have  grown  long  and  bristly :  in 
short,  they  will  have  lost  that  ineffable 
tender  bloom  of  young  life  which  makes 
them  quite  a  touching  sight  to-day.  Strange 
that  loss  of  charm  which  comes  with  develop- 
ment in  us  all,  pigs  included.  A  tendency 
to  pigginess,  as  in  these  youngsters,  a  ten- 
dency to  manhood  in  the  prattling  and 
crowing  babe,  are  both  hailed  as  charming: 
but  the  full-grown  pig !  the  full-grown  man  ! 
Alas !  in  each  case  the  charm  seems  to  flee 
with  the  advent  of  bristles. 

But  let  us  return  to  the  driver. 

Under  his  arm  he  carries  a  basket,  from 
which  now  and  again  proceed  suppressed 
squeaks  and  grunts.  It  is  '  the  rickling,' 
the  weakling,  of  the  family.  It  will  pro- 


6  PROSE    FANCIES 

bably  find  an  early  death,  and  be  embalmed 
in  sage  and  onions.  The  man  has  already 
had  an  offer  for  it — from  '  Mr.  Lamb.'  Mr. 
Lamb !  Yes,  Mr.  Lamb  at  Six-Elm  Farm. 
'  Oh !  I  see.'  But  was  it  not  a  startling 
coincidence? 

It  has  taken  half  an  hour  to  come  from 
the  old  bridge  to  the  cross-roads,  barely 
half  a  mile.  And  now,  good-bye,  funny 
little  silken-coated  piglets ;  good-bye,  grave 
old  mother.  Ge-whoop !  Good-bye,  gentle 
driver.  As  you  move  behind  your  charge 
with  that  tender  smile,  with  that  burden 
safely  pressed  beneath  your  arm,  I  seem 
to  have  had  a  vision  of  the  Good  Shepherd. 

II 

Down  by  the  river  there  is,  as  yet,  little 
sign  of  spring.  Its  bed  is  all  choked  with 
last  year's  reeds,  trampled  about  like  a 
manger.  Yet  its  running  seems  to  have 
caught  a  happier  note,  and  here  and  there 
along  its  banks  flash  silvery  wands  of  palm. 
Right  down  among  the  shabby  burnt-out 
underwood  moves  the  sordid  figure  of  a 


A    SPRING    MORNING          7 

man.  He  seems  the  very  genius  loci.  His 
clothes  are  torn  and  soiled,  as  though  he  had 
slept  on  the  ground.  The  white  lining  of 
one  arm  gleams  out  like  the  slashing  in  a 
doublet.  His  hat  is  battered,  and  he  wears 
no  collar.  I  don't  like  staring  at  his  face, 
for  he  has  been  unfortunate.  Yet  a  glimpse 
tells  me  that  he  is  far  down  the  hill  of  life, 
old  and  drink-corroded  at  fifty.  He  is 
miserably  gathering  sticks — perhaps  a  little 
job  for  the  farm  close  by.  He  probably 
slept  in  the  barn  there  last  night,  turned  out 
drunk  from  the  public-house.  He  will  pro- 
bably do  and  be  done  by  likewise  to-night. 
How  many  faggots  to  the  dram  ?  one 
wonders.  What  is  he  thinking  as  he  rustles 
about  disconsolately  among  the  bushes? 
Of  what  is  he  dreaming"*  What  does  he 
make  of  the  lark  up  there?  But  I  notice 
he  never  looks  at  it.  Perhaps  he  cannot 
bear  to.  For  who  knows  what  is  in  the 
heart  beneath  that  poor  soiled  coat  ?  If 
you  have  hopes,  he  may  have  memories. 
Some  day  your  hopes  will  be  memories 
too — birds  that  have  flown  away,  flowers 
long  since  withered. 


8  PROSE    FANCIES 

in 

A  short  way  further  along,  I  come  across 
a  boy  gathering  palm.  He  is  a  town  boy, 
and  has  come  all  the  way  from  Whitechapel 
thus  early.  He  has  already  gathered  a 
great  bundle — worth  five  shillings  to  him, 
he  says.  This  same  palm  will  to-morrow 
be  distributed  over  London,  and  those  who 
buy  sprigs  of  it  by  the  Bank  will  know 
nothing  of  the  blue-eyed  boy  who  gathered 
it,  and  the  murmuring  river  by  which  it 
grew.  And  the  lad,  once  more  lost  in  some 
squalid  court,  will  be  a  sort  of  Sir  John 
Mandeville  to  his  companions — a  Sir  John 
Mandeville  of  the  fields,  with  their  water-rats, 
their  birds'  eggs,  and  many  other  wonders. 
And  one  can  imagine  him  saying,  '  And  the 
sparrows  there  fly  right  up  into  the  sun,  and 
sing  like  angels ! '  But  he  won't  get  his 
comrades  to  believe  that. 

IV 

Spring  has  a  wonderful  way  of  bringing 
out  hidden  traits  of  character.  Through  my 
window  I  look  out  upon  a  tiny  farm.  It  is 


A    SPRING    MORNING         9 

kept  by  a  tall,  hard-looking,  rough-bearded 
fellow,  whom  I  have  watched  striding  about 
his  fields  all  winter,  with  but  little  sympathy. 
Yet  it  would  seem  I  have  been  doing  him 
wrong.  For  this  morning,  as  he  passed 
along  the  outside  of  the  railing  wherein  his 
two  sheep  were  grazing,  suddenly  they  came 
bounding  towards  him  with  every  manifesta- 
tion of  delight,  literally  recalling  the  lamb- 
kins which  Wordsworth  saw  bound  'as  to 
the  tabor's  sound.'  They  followed  as  far 
as  the  railing  permitted,  pushing  their  noses 
through  at  him  ;  nay,  when  at  last  he  moved 
out  of  reach,  they  were  evidently  so  much  in 
love  that  they  leaped  the  fence  and  made  after 
him.  And  he,  instead  of  turning  brutally 
on  them,  as  I  had  expected,  smiled  and 
played  with  them  awhile.  Indeed,  he  had 
some  difficulty  in  disengaging  himself  from 
their  persistent  affection.  So,  evidently, 
they  knew  him  better  than  I. 


A    CONSPIRACY    OF    SILENCE 

WHY  do  we  go  on  talking?  It  is  a  serious 
question,  one  on  which  the  happiness  of 
thousands  depends.  .  For  there  is  no  more 
wearing  social  demand  than  that  of  com- 
pulsory conversation.  All  day  long  we 
must  either  talk,  or — dread  alternative — 
listen.  Now,  that  were  very  well  if  we  had 
something  to  say,  or  our  fellow-sufferer 
something  to  tell,  or,  best  of  all,  if  either  of 
us  possessed  the  gift  of  clothing  the  old 
commonplaces  with  charm.  But  men  with 
that  great  gift  are  not  to  be  met  with  in  every 
railway-carriage,  or  at  every  dinner.  The 
man  we  actually  meet  is  one  whose  joke, 
though  we  have  signalled  it  a  mile  off,  we 
are  powerless  to  stop,  whose  opinions  come 
out  with  a  whirr  as  of  clockwork.  Besides, 
it  always  happens  in  life  that  the  man — or 
woman — with  whom  we  would  like  to  talk  is 


A  CONSPIRACY  OF  SILENCE    n 

at  the  next  table.  Those  who  really  have 
something  to  say  to  each  other  so  seldom 
have  a  chance  of  saying  it. 

Why,  O  why,  do  we  go  on  talking?  We 
ask  the  question  in  all  seriousness,  not 
merely  in  the  hope  of  making  some  cheap 
paradoxical  fun  out  of  the  answer.  It  is  a 
cry  from  the  deeps  of  ineffable  boredom. 

Is  it  to  impart  information  ?  At  the  best 
it  is  a  dreary  ideal.  But,  at  any  rate,  it  is  a 
mistaken  use  of  the  tongue,  for  there  is  no 
information  we  can  impart  which  has  not 
been  far  more  accurately  stated  in  book- 
form.  Even  if  it  should  happen  to  be  a 
quite  new  fact,  an  accident  happily  rare  as 
the  transit  of  Venus — a  new  fact  about  the 
North  Pole,  for  instance — well,  a  book,  not 
a  conversation,  is  the  place  for  it.  To  talk 
book,  past,  present,  or  to  come,  is  not  to 
converse. 

To  converse,  as  with  every  other  art,  is 
out  of  three  platitudes  to  make  not  a  fourth 
platitude — 'but  a  star.'  Newness  of  infor- 
mation is  no  necessity  of  conversation  :  else 
were  the  Central  News  Agency  the  best  of 
talkers.  Indeed,  the  oldest  information  is 


12  PROSE    FANCIES 

perhaps  the  best  material  for  the  artist  as 
talker:  though,  truly,  as  with  every  other 
artist,  material  matters  little.  There  are 
just  two  or  three  men  of  letters  left  to  us, 
who  provide  us  examples  of  that  inspired 
soliloquy,  those  conversations  of  one,  which 
are  our  nearest  approach  to  the  talk  of  other 
days.  How  good  it  is  to  listen  to  one  of 
these  ! — for  it  is  the  great  charm  of  their  talk 
that  we  remember  nothing.  There  were  no 
prickly  bits  of  information  to  stick  on  one's 
mind  like  burrs.  Their  talk  had  no  regular 
features,  but,  like  a  sunrise,  was  all  music 
and  glory. 

The  friend  who  talks  the  night  through 
with  his  friend,  till  the  dawn  climbs  in  like  a 
pallid  rose  at  the  window ;  the  lovers  who, 
while  the  sun  is  setting,  sit  in  the  greenwood 
and  say,  '  Is  it  thou  ?  It  is  I  !'  in  awestruck 
antiphony,  till  the  stars  appear ;  and,  holiest 
converse  of  all,  the  mystic  prattle  of  mother 
and  babe :  why  are  all  these  such  wonder- 
ful talk  if  not  because  we  remember  no 
word  of  them  —  only  the  glory?  They 
leave  us  nothing,  in  image  worthy  of  the 
time,  to  '  pigeon-hole,'  nothing  to  store 


A  CONSPIRACY  OF  SILENCE    13 

with  our  vouchers  in  the  'pigeon-holes'  of 
memory. 

Pigeon-holes  of  memory !  Think  of  the 
degradation.  And  memory  was  once  a 
honeycomb,  a  hive  of  all  the  wonderful 
words  of  poets,  of  all  the  marvellous  moods 
of  lovers.  Once  it  was  a  shell  that  listened 
tremulously  upon  Olympus,  and  caught  the 
accents  of  the  Gods;  now  it  is  a  phono- 
graph catching  every  word  that  falleth  from 
the  mouths  of  the  board  of  guardians.  Once 
a  muse,  now  a  servile  drudge  'twixt  man 
and  man. 

And  this  '  pigeon-hole '  memory — once  an 
impressionist  of  divine  moments,  now  the 
miser  of  all  unimportant,  trivial  detail — is 
our  tyrant,  the  muse  of  modern  talk.  Men 
talk  now  not  what  they  feel  or  think,  but 
what  they  remember,  with  their  bad  good 
memories.  If  they  remembered  the  poets, 
or  their  first  love,  or  the  spring,  or  the  stars, 
it  were  well  enough  :  but  no  !  they  remember 
but  what  the  poets  ate  and  wore,  the  last 
divorce  case,  the  state  of  the  crops,  the  last 
trivial  detail  about  Mars.  The  man  with  the 
muck-rake  would  have  made  a  great  repu- 


14  PROSE    FANCIES 

tation  as  a  talker  had  he  lived  to-day :  for, 
as  our  modern  speech  has  it,  a  Great  Man 
simply  means  a  Great  Memory,  and  a  Great 
Memory  is  simply  a  prosperous  marine-store. 

What,  in  fact,  do  we  talk  about?  Mainly 
about  our  business,  our  food,  or  our  diseases. 
All  three  themes  more  or  less  centre  in  that 
of  food.  How  we  revel  in  the  brutal 
digestive  details,  and  call  it  gastronomy! 
How  our  host  plumes  himself  on  his  wine, 
as  though  it  were  a  personal  virtue,  and  not 
the  merely  obvious  accessory  of  a  man  with 
ten  thousand  a  year  !  Strange,  is  it  not,  how 
we  pat  and  stroke  our  possessions  as  though 
they  belonged  to  us,  instead  of  to  our  money 
— our  grandfather's  money  ? 

There  is,  some  hope  and  believe,  an 
imminent  Return  to  Simplicity — Socialism 
the  unwise  it  call.  If  it  be  really  true,  what 
good  news  for  the  grave  humorous  man,  who 
hates  talking  to  anything  but  trees  and 
children  !  For,  if  that  Return  to  Simplicity 
means  anything,  it  must  mean  the  sweeping 
away  of  immemorial  rookeries  of  talk — such 
crannied  hives  of  gossip  as  the  professions, 
with  all  their  garrulous  heritage  of  trivial 


A  CONSPIRACY  OF  SILENCE    15 

witty  ana :  literary,  dramatic,  legal,  aristo- 
cratic, ecclesiastical,  commercial.  How  good 
to  dip  them  all  deep  in  the  great  ocean  of 
oblivion,  and  watch  the  bookworms,  diarists, 
'raconteurs,'  and  all  the  old-clothesmen  of  life, 
scurrying  out  of  their  holes,  as  when  in 
summer-time  Mary  Anne  submerges  the  cock- 
roach trap  within  the  pail !  And  O,  let  there 
be  no  Noah  to  that  flood  !  Let  none  survive 
to  tell  another  tale ;  for,  only  when  the 
chronicler  of  small-beer  is  dead,  shall  we  be 
able  to  know  men  as  men,  heroes  as  heroes, 
poets  as  poets — instead  of  mere  centres  of 
gossip,  an  inch  of  text  to  a  yard  of  footnote. 
Then  only  may  we  begin  to  talk  of  some- 
thing worth  the  talking :  not  merely  of  how 
the  great  man  creased  his  trousers,  and  call  it 
'the  study  of  character,'  but  of  how  he  was 
great,  and  whether  it  is  possible  to  climb 
after  him. 

Talk,  too,  is  so  definite,  so  limited.  The 
people  we  meet  might  seem  so  wonderful, 
might  mean  such  quaint  and  charming 
meanings  sometimes,  if  they  would  not 
talk.  Like  some  delightfully  bound  old 
volume  in  a  foreign  tongue,  that  looks  like 


16  PROSE    FANCIES 

one  of  the  Sibylline  books,  till  a  friend 
translates  the  title  and  explains  that  it  is 
a  sixteenth-century  law  dictionary:  so  are 
the  men  and  women  we  meet.  How  inter- 
esting they  might  be  if  they  would  not 
persist  in  telling  us  what  they  are  about ! 

That,  indeed,  is  the  abiding  charm  of 
Nature.  No  sensible  man  can  envy  Asylas, 
to  whom  the  language  of  birds  was  as 
familiar  as  French  argot  to  our  young 
decadents.  Think  how  terrible  it  would  be 
if  Nature  could  all  of  a  sudden  learn 
English !  That  exquisite  mirror  of  all  our 
shifting  moods  would  be  broken  for  ever. 
No  longer  might  we  coin  the  woodland 
into  metaphors  of  our  own  joys  and  sorrows. 
The  birds  would  no  longer  flute  to  us  of 
lost  loves,  but  of  found  worms  ;  we  should 
realise  how  terribly  selfish  they  are ;  we 
could  never  more  quote  '  Hark,  hark,  the 
lark  at  heaven's  gate  sings,'  or  poetise  with 
Mr.  Patmore  of '  the  heavenly-minded  thrush.' 
And  what  awful  voices  some  of  those  great 
red  roses  would  have !  Yes,  Nature  is  so 
sympathetic  because  she  is  so  silent ;  because, 
when  she  does  talk,  she  talks  in  a  language 


A  CONSPIRACY  OF  SILENCE    17 

which  we  cannot  understand,  but  only  guess 
at ;  and  her  silence  allows  us  to  hear  her 
eternal  meanings,  which  her  gossiping  would 
drown. 

Happy  monks  of  La  Trappe !  One  has 
heard  the  foolish  chattering  world  take  pity 
upon  you.  An  hour  of  talk  to  a  year  of 
silence !  O  heavenly  proportion !  And  I 
can  well  imagine  that  when  that  hour  has 
come,  it  seems  but  a  trivial  toy  you  have 
forgotten  how  to  play  with.  Were  I  a 
Trappist,  I  would  use  my  hour  to  evangelise 
converts  to  silence,  would  break  the  long 
year's  quiet  but  to  whisper,  5  How  good  is 
silence  ! '  Let  us  inaugurate  a  secular  La 
Trappe,  let  us  plot  a  conspiracy  of  silence, 
let  us  send  the  world  to  Coventry.  Or,  if 
we  must  talk,  let  it  be  in  Latin,  or  in  the 
'Volapiik'  of  myriad-meaning  music;  and 
let  no  man  joke  save  in  Greek — that  all 
may  laugh.  But,  best  of  all,  let  us  leave 
off  talking  altogether,  and  listen  to  the 
morning  stars. 


LIFE  IN   INVERTED   COMMAS 

As  I  waited  for  an  -omnibus  at  the  corner  of 
Fleet  Street  the  other  day,  I  was  the  spec- 
tator of  a  curious  occurrence.  Suddenly 
there  was  a  scuffle  hard  by  me,  and,  turning 
round,  I  saw  a  powerful  gentlemanly  man 
wrestling  with  two  others  in  livery,  who  were 
evidently  intent  on  arresting  him.  These 
men,  I  at  once  perceived,  belonged  to  the 
detective  force  of  the  Incorporated  Society  of 
Authors,  and  were  engaged  in  the  capture  of 
a  notorious  plagiarist.  I  knew  the  prisoner 
well.  He  had,  in  fact,  pillaged  from  my  own 
writings  ;  but  I  was  none  the  less  sorry  for 
his  plight,  to  which,  I  would  assure  the 
reader,  I  was  no  party.  Yet  he  was,  I 
admit,  an  egregiously  bad  case,  and  my  pity 
is  doubtless  misplaced  sentiment.  Like 
many  another,  he  had  begun  his  career  as  a 

quotation  and  ended  as  a  plagiarism,  daring 

is 


LIFE  IN  INVERTED  COMMAS    19 

even,  in  one  instance,  to  imitate  that  shadow 
in  the  fairy-tale,  which  rose  up  on  a  sudden 
one  day  and  declared  himself  to  be  the 
substance  and  the  substance  his  shadow. 
Indeed,  he  had  so  far  succeeded  as  to  make 
many  people  question  whether  or  not  he 
was  the  original  and  the  other  man  the 
plagiarism.  However,  there  was  no  longer 
to  be  any  doubt  of  it,  for  his  captors  had 
him  fast  this  time ;  and,  presently,  we  saw 
him  taken  off  in  a  hansom,  well  secured 
between  strong  inverted  commas. 

This  curious  circumstance  set  me  reflecting, 
and,  as  we  trundled  along  towards  Charing 
Cross,  my  mind  gave  birth  to  sundry  senten- 
tious reflections. 

After  all,  I  thought,  that  unlucky  plagiarist 
is  no  worse  than  most  of  us  :  for  is  it  not 
true  that  few  of  us  live  as  conscientiously  as 
we  should  within  our,  inverted  commas? 
We  are  far  more  inclined  to  live  in  that 
author,  not  ourselves,  who  makes  for  origin- 
ality. It  is,  of  course,  difficult,  even  with 
the  best  intentions,  to  make  proper  acknow- 
ledgment of  all  our  'authorities' — to  attach, 
so  to  say,  the  true  ' del.  et  sculp'  to  all  our 


20  PROSE    FANCIES 

little  bits  of  art.  There  is  so  much  in  our 
lives  that  we  honestly  don't  know  how  we 
came  by. 

As  I  reflected  in  this  wise,  I  was  drawn  to 
notice  my  companions  in  the  omnibus,  and 
lo !  there  was  not  an  original  person  amongst 
us.  Yet  I  looked  in  vain  to  see  if  they  wore 
their  inverted  commas.  Not  one  of  them, 
believe  me,  had  had  the  honesty  to  bring 
them.  Each  looked  at  me  unblushingly,  as 
though  he  were  really  original,  and  not  a 
cheap  German  print  of  originals  I  had  seen 
in  books  and  pictures  since  I  could  read. 
I  really  think  that  they  must  have  been 
unaware  of  their  imposture.  They  could 
hardly  have  pretended  so  successfully. 

There  was  the  young  dandy  just  let  loose 
from  his  band-box,  wearing  exactly  the  same 
face,  the  same  smile,  the  same  neck-tie, 
holding  his  stick  in  exactly  the  same  fashion, 
talking  exactly  the  same  words,  with  pre- 
cisely the  same  accent,  as  his  neighbour, 
another  dandy,  and  as  all  the  other  dandies 
between  the  Bank  and  Hyde  Park  Corner. 
Yet  he  seemed  persuaded  of  his  own  origin- 
ality. He  evidently  felt  that  there  was 


LIFE  IN  INVERTED  COMMAS    21 

something  individual  about  him,  and 
apparently  relied  with  confidence  on  his 
friend  not  addressing  a  third  dandy  by 
mistake  for  him.  I  hope  he  had  his  name 
safe  in  his  hat. 

Looking  at  these  three  examples  of 
Nature's  love  of  repeating  herself,  I  said  to 
myself:  Somewhere  in  heaven  stands  a 
great  stencil,  and  at  each  sweep  of  the 
cosmic  brush  a  million  dandies  are  born, 
each  one  alike  as  a  box  of  collars.  Indeed, 
I  felt  that  this  stencil  process  had  been 
employed  in  the  manufacture  of  every  single 
person  in  that  omnibus :  two  middle-aged 
matrons,  each  of  whom  seemed  to  think  that 
having  given  birth  to  six  children  was  an 
indisputable  claim  to  originality  ;  two  elderly 
business  men  to  correspond ;  a  young  miss 
carrying  music  and  wearing  eye-glasses  ;  and 
a  clergyman  discussing  stocks  with  one  of 
the  business  men ;  I  alone  in  my  corner 
being,  of  course,  the  one  occupant  for  whom 
Nature  had  been  at  the  expense  of  casting  a 
special  mould,  and  at  the  extravagance  of 
breaking  it. 

Presently  a  matron  and   a  business  man 


22  PROSE    FANCIES 

alighted,  and  two  dainty  young  women, 
evidently  of  artistic  tendencies,  joined  the 
Hammersmith  pilgrims.  One  saw  at  a  glance 
that  they  were  very  sure  of  their  originality. 
There  were  no  inverted  commas  around  their 
pretty  young  heads,  bless  them  !  But  then 
Queen  Anne  houses  are  as  much  on  a  pattern 
as  more  commonplace  structures,  and  Bedford 
Parkians  are  already  being  manufactured  by 
celestial  stencil.  What  I  specially  noticed 
about  them  was  their  plagiarised  voices — 
curious,  yearning  things,  evidently  intended 
to  suggest  depths  of  infinite  passion,  con- 
trolled by  many  a  wild  and  weary  past, 

'  Infinite  passion  and  the  pain 
Of  finite  souls  that  yearn ' — 

the  kind  of  voice,  you  know,  in  which 
Socialist  actresses  yearn  out  passages  from 
'The  Cenci,'  feeling  that  they  do  a  fearful 
thing.  The  voice  began,  I  believe,  with 
Miss  Ellen  Terry.  With  her,  though,  it  is 
charming,  for  it  is,  we  feel,  the  voice  of  real 
emotion.  There  are  real  tears  in  it.  It  is 
her  own.  But  with  these  ladies,  who  were 
discussing  the  last  'Independent'  play,  it 


LIFE  IN  INVERTED  COMMAS    23 

was  so  evidently  a  stop  pulled  out  by 
affectation — the  vox  inhumana,  one  might 
say,  for  it  is  a  voice  unlike  anything  else  to 
be  found  in  the  four  elements.  It  has  its 
counterpart  in  the  imitators  of  Mr.  Beerbohm 
Tree — young  actors  who  likewise  endeavour 
to  make  up  for  the  lack  of  anything  like 
dramatic  passion  by  pretending  to  control 
it :  the  control  being  feigned  by  a  set  jaw  or 
a  hard,  throaty,  uncadenced  voice  of  preter- 
natural solemnity.  These  ladies,  too,  wore 
plagiarised  gowns  of  the  most  '  original ' 
style,  plagiarised  hats,  glittering  plagiarised 
smiles  ;  and  yet  they  so  evidently  looked 
down  on  every  one  else  in  the  omnibus,  whom, 
perhaps,  after  all,  it  had  been  kinder  of  me 
to  describe  as  the  hackneyed  quotations  of 
humanity,  who  had  probably  thought  it 
unnecessary  to  wear  their  inverted  commas, 
as  they  were  so  well  known. 

At  last  I  grew  impatient  of  them,  and, 
leaving  the  omnibus,  finished  my  journey 
home  by  the  Underground.  What  was  my 
surprise  when  I  reached  it  to  find  our  little 
house  wearing  inverted  commas — two  on  the 
chimney,  and  two  on  the  gate !  My  wife, 


24  PROSE    FANCIES 

too !  and  the  words  of  endearing  salutation 
with  which  I  greeted  her,  why,  they  also  to 
my  diseased  fancy  seemed  to  leave  my  lips 
between  quotation  marks.  There  is  nothing 
in  which  we  fancy  ourselves  so  original  as  in 
our  terms  of  endearment,  nothing  in  which 
we  are  so  like  all  the  world  ;  for,  alas  !  there 
is  no  euphuism  of  affection  which  lovers  have 
not  prattled  together  in  springtides  long 
before  the  Christian  era.  If  you  call  your 
wife  '  a  chuck,'  so  did  Othello ;  and,  whatever 
dainty  diminutive  you  may  hit  on,  Catullus, 
with  his  warbling  Latin,  '  makes  mouths  at 
our  speech.' 

I  grew  so  haunted  with  this  oppressive 
thought,  that  my  wife  could  not  but  notice 
my  trouble.  But  how  could  I  tell  her  of  the 
spectral  inverted  commas  that  dodged  every 
move  of  her  dear  head? — tell  her  that  our 
own  original  firstborn,  just  beginning  to  talk 
as  never  baby  talked,  was  an  unblushing 
plagiarism  of  his  great-great-great-grand- 
father, that  our  love  was  nothing  but  the 
expansion  of  a  line  of  Keats,  and  that  our 
whole  life  was  one  hideous  mockery  of 
originality?  'Woman,'  I  felt  inclined  to 


LIFE  IN  INVERTED  COMMAS    25 

shriek,  '  be  yourself,  and  not  your  great- 
grandmother.  A  man  may  not  marry  his 
great-grandmother.  For  God's  sake  let  us 
all  be  ourselves,  and  not  ghastly  mimicries 
of  our  ancestors,  or  our  neighbours.  Let  us 
shake  ourselves  free  from  this  evil  dream  of 
imitation.  Merciful  Heaven,  it  is  killing 
me  ! '  But  surely  that  was  a  quotation  too, 
and,  accidentally  catching  sight  of  the  back 
of  my  hand,  suddenly  the  tears  sprang  to 
my  eyes,  for  it  was  just  so  the  big  soft  veins 
used  to  be  on  the  hands  of  my  father,  when 
a  little  boy  I  prayed  between  his  knees. 
He  was  gone,  but  here  was  his  hand — his 
hand,  not  mine ! 

Then  an  idea  possessed  me.  There  was 
but  one  way.  I  could  die.  There  was  a 
little  phial  of  laudanum  in  the  medicine- 
cupboard  that  always  leered  at  me  from 
among  the  other  bottles  like  a  serpent's  eye. 
Thrice  happy  thought !  Who  would  miss 
such  a  poor  imitation?  Even  the  mere 
soap-vending  tradesmen  bid  us  '  beware  of 
imitations.'  Dark  wine  of  forgetfulness.  .  .  . 
No,  that  was  a  quotation.  However,  here 
was  the  phial.  I  drew  the  cork,  inhaled  for 


26  PROSE    FANCIES 

a  moment  the  hard  dry  odour  of  poppies, 
and  prepared  to  drink.  But  just  at  that 
moment  I  seemed  to  hear  a  horrid  little 
laugh  coming  out  of  the  bottle,  and  a  voice 
chuckled  at  my  ear  :  '  You  ass,  do  you  call 
that  original '  ?  It  was  so  absurd  that  I 
burst  out  into  hysterical  laughter.  Here 
had  I  been  about  to  do  the  most  '  banal ' 
thing  of  all.  Was  there  anything  in  the 
world  quite  so  commonplace  as  suicide  ? 

And  with  the  good  spirits  of  laughter 
came  peace.  Nay,  why  worry  to  be  'original'? 
Why  such  haste  to  be  unlike  the  rest  of  the 
world,  when  the  best  things  of  life  were 
manifestly  those  which  all  men  had  in 
common  ?  Was  love  less  sweet  because  my 
next-door  neighbour  knew  it  as  well  ?  Would 
the  same  reason  make  death  less  bitter? 
And  were  not  those  tender  diminutives  all 
the  more  precious,  because  their  vowels  had 
been  rounded  for  us  by  the  sweet  lips  of 
lovers  dead  and  gone? — sainted  jewels,  still 
warm  from  the  beat  of  tragic  bosoms,  flowers 
which  their  kisses  had  freighted  with  im- 
mortal meanings. 

And    then     I     bethought    me    how    the 


LIFE  IN  INVERTED  COMMAS    27 

meadow-daisies  were  one  as  the  other,  and 
how,  when  the  pearly  shells  of  the  dog  rose 
settled  on  the  hedge  like  a  flight  of  butter- 
flies, one  was  as  the  other ;  how  the  birds 
sang  alike,  how  star  was  twin  with  star,  and 
in  peas  is  no  distinction.  My  rhetoric 
stopped  as  I  was  about  to  say  '  as  wife  is  to 
wife' — for  I  thought  I  would  first  kiss  her 
and  see  :  and  lo  !  I  was  once  more  perplexed, 
for  as  I  looked  down  into  her  eyes,  simple 
and  blue  and  deep,  as  the  sky  is  simple  and 
blue  and  deep,  I  declared  her  to  be  the  only 
woman  in  the  world — which  was  obviously 
not  exact.  But  it  was  true,  for  all  that. 


FRACTIONAL  HUMANITY 

MANKIND,  in  its  heavy  fashion,  has  chosen  to 
mock  the  tailor  with  the  fact — the  indubit- 
able fact — that  he  is  but  the  ninth  part  of  a 
man.  Yet,  after  all,  at  this  time  of  day,  it 
seems  more  of  a  compliment  than  a  gibe. 
To  be  a  whole  ninth  of  a  man  !  Few  of  us, 
when  we  ponder  it,  can  boast  so  much. 
Take,  for  instance,  that  other  proverbial  case 
of  the  fractional-part-of-a-pin-maker.  It  takes 
nine  persons  to  make  a  pin,  we  were  taught 
in  our  catechism.  Actually  that  means  that 
it  takes  nine  persons  to  make  one  whole  pin- 
maker,  which  leaves  the  question  still  to  be 
solved  as  to  how  many  whole  pin-makers  it 
takes  to  make  a  man.  What  is  the  relation 
of  one  pin-maker  to  the  whole  social 
economy  ?  That  discovered,  a  multiplication 
by  nine  will  give  us  the  exact  fractional  part 

of  manhood  which  belongs  to  the  ninth-of-a- 

28 


FRACTIONAL    HUMANITY    29 

pin-maker.  Obviously  he  is  a  much  more 
microscopic  creature  than  the  immemorially 
despised  tailor,  and,  alas  !  his  case  is  nearest 
that  of  most  of  us.  And  it  is  curious  to 
notice  how  we  rejoice  in,  rather  than  lament, 
this  inevitable  result  of  that  great  law  of 
differentiation,  which  one  may  figure  as  a 
terrible  machine  hour  after  hour  chopping 
up  mankind  into  more  and  more  infini- 
tesimal fragments.  We  feel  a  pride  in  being 
spoken  of  as  '  specialists  ' — and  yet  what 
is  a  specialist  ?  The  nine-hundred-and- 
ninety-ninth  part  of  a  man.  Call  me  not 
an  entomologist,  call  me  a  lepidopterist,  if 
you  will — though,  really,  that  is  too  broad 
a  term  for  a  man  who  is  not  so  much  taken 
up  with  moths  generally  as  with  the  third 
ring  of  the  antennae  of  the  great  oak-eggar. 

If  one  is  troubled  with  a  gift  for  symbol- 
ism, it  is  hard  to  treat  any  man  one  meets  as 
though  he  were  really  a  whole  man :  to  treat 
a  lawyer  as  though  he  were  anything  but  a 
deed  of  assignment,  or  a  surgeon  as  if  he 
were  anything  more  than  an  operation.  As 
the  metropolitan  trains  load  and  unload  in  a 
morning,  what  does  one  see?  Gross  upon 


30  PROSE    FANCIES 

gross  of  steel  pens,  a  few  quills,  whole 
carnages  full  of  bricklayers'  trowels,  and  how 
strange  it  seems  to  watch  all  the  bank-books 
sorting  themselves  out  from  the  motley,  and 
arranging  themselves  in  the  first  classes,  just 
as  we  see  them  on  the  shelf  in  the  bank.  It 
is  a  curious  sight.  The  little  shop-girl  there, 
what  is  she  but  a  roll  of  pink  ribbon  ? — nay, 
she  is  but  half-a-yard.  And  the  poor  infini- 
tesimal porters  and  guards,  how  pathetically 
small  seems  their  share  in  the  great  mono- 
syllable Man,  animalcules  in  that  great 
social  system  which,  again,  is  but  an  animal- 
cule in  the  blood  of  Time.  Still  more  infini- 
tesimal seems  the  man  who  is  a  subdivision, 
not  of  a  form  of  work  even,  but  merely  of  a 
form  of  taste  ;  the  man  who  collects  foreign 
stamps,  say,  or  book-plates,  or  arrow-heads, 
the  connoisseur  of  a  tiny  section  of  one  of  the 
lesser  schools  of  Italian  painting,  the  coral- 
insect  who  has  devoted  his  life  to  a  participle, 
first-edition  men,  and  all  those  various  book- 
worms who,  without  impropriety  be  it 
spoken,  are  the  maggots  that  breed  in  the 
dung  of  the  great.  A  certain  friend  of  mine 
always  appears  to  me  in  the  similitude  of  a 


FRACTIONAL   HUMANITY    31 

first  edition  of  one  of  Mr.  Hardy's  novels. 
I  have  the  greatest  difficulty  at  times  to 
prevent  myself  forcibly  setting  him  upon  my 
shelf  to  complete  my  set  ;  for,  oddly  enough, 
he  is  the  one  bit  of  Hardyana  I  lack.  In 
which  confession  I  let  the  reader  into  the 
secret  of  my  own  petty  limitations.  To  have 
one's  horizon  bounded  by  a  book-plate,  to 
have  no  hope,  no  wish  in  life,  beyond  a  first 
edition !  The  workers,  however  sectional, 
have  some  place  in  the  text  of  the  great 
book  of  life,  but  such  mere  testers  and  tasters 
of  existence  have  hardly  a  place  even  in  the 
gloss,  though  it  be  printed  in  the  most 
microscopic  diamond. 

And  every  moment,  as  we  said,  we  are 
being  turned  out  smaller  and  smaller  from 
the  mill  of  Time.  You  ask  your  little  boy 
what  he  would  like  to  be  when  he  grows 
up.  To  your  consternation  he  answers,  '  A 
man  !'  You  hide  your  face  :  you  cannot  tell 
him  how  impossible  it  is  now  to  be  that. 
Poor  little  chap  !  He  is  born  centuries  too 
late.  You  cannot  promise  even  that  he 
shall  be  a  tailor,  for  by  the  time  he  is  old 
enough  to  be  apprenticed,  how  do  you  know 


32  PROSE    FANCIES 

how  that  ancient  profession  may  be  divided 
up  ?  May  you  not  have  sadly  to  tell  him : 
'  My  poor  boy,  it  is  impossible  to  make  you 
that — for  there  are  no  longer  any  whole- 
tailors.  You  may,  if  you  like,  be  a  thread- 
waxer  or  a  needle-threader  ;  you  may  be  one 
of  the  thirty  men  it  takes  to  make  a  button- 
hole, but  a  complete  tailor — alas !  it  is 
impossible.' 

Who  will  save  us  from  this  remorseless 
law  of  eternal  subdivision?  To  make  one 
complete  man  out  of  all  this  vast  collection  of 
snips  and  snippets  of  humanity.  To  piece 
all  the  trades,  professions,  and  fads  together, 
like  a  puzzle,  till  one  saw  the  honest  face  of 
a  genuine  man  round  and  whole  once  more. 
To  take  these  dry  bones  of  the  Valley  of 
Commerce,  and  powerfully  breathe  into 
them  the  unifying  breath  of  life,  that  once 
more  they  stand  up,  not  as  fractional  bones 
of  the  wrist  or  the  ankle  of  manhood,  but 
mighty,  full-blooded  men  as  of  old.  Ah ! 
we  must  wait  for  a  new  creation  for  that. 

The  mystics  have  a  suggestive  fancy  that 
all  our  vast  complex  life  once  existed  as  a 
peaceful  unit  in  the  mind  of  God.  But 


FRACTIONAL   HUMANITY    33 

as  God,  brooding  in  the  abyss,  meditated 
upon  Himself,  various  thoughts  separated 
themselves  and  revolved  within  the  atmo- 
sphere of  His  mind,  at  first  unconscious 
of  themselves  or  each  other.  Presently, 
desire  of  separate  existence  awoke  in  these 
shadowy  things,  a  lust  of  corporeality  grew 
upon  them,  and  hence  at  last  the  fall  into 
physical  life,  the  realisation  in  concrete  form 
of  their  diaphanous  individualities.  And 
that  original  cause  of  man's  separation  from 
deity,  this  desire  of  subdivision,  how  it  has 
gone  on  operating,  more  and  more !  We 
call  it  differentiation,  but  the  mystic  would 
describe  it  as  dividing  ourselves  more  and 
more  from  God,  the  primeval  unity  in  which 
alone  is  blessedness.  Blake  in  one  of  his 
prophetic  books  sings  man's  '  fall  into 
Division  and  his  resurrection  into  Unity.' 
And  when  we  look  about  us  and  consider 
but  the  common  use  of  words,  how  do  we 
find  the  mystic's  apparently  wild  fancy  illus- 
trated in  every  section  of  our  commonplace 
lives.  What  do  we  mean  when  we  speak  of 
'division'  of  interests,  'division'  of  families, 
when  we  say  that  '  union '  is  strength,  or 
C 


34  PROSE    FANCIES 

how  good  it  is  to  dwell  together  in'  unity,' 
or  speak  of  lives  'made  one'?  Are  we 
not  unwittingly  expressing  the  unconscious 
yearning  of  the  fractions  to  merge  once  more 
in  the  sweet  kinship  of  the  unit,  of  the  ninths 
and  the  nine-hundred-and-ninety-ninths  of 
humanity  to  merge  their  differences  in  the 
mighty  generalisation  Man,  of  man  to  merge 
his  finite  existence  in  the  mysterious  infinite, 
the  undivided,  indivisible  One,  to  'be  made 
one,'  as  theology  phrases  it,  '  with  God '  ? 
How  the  complex  life  of  our  time  longs  to 
return  to  its  first  happy  state  of  simplicity, 
we  feel  on  every  hand.  What  is  Socialism 
but  a  vast  throb  of  man's  desire  after  unity  ? 
We  are  overbred.  The  simple  old  type  of 
manhood  is  lost  long  since  in  endless  orchid- 
aceous variation.  O  !  to  be  simple  shepherds, 
simple  sailors,  simple  delvers  of  the  soil,  to 
be  something  complete  on  our  own  account, 
to  be  relative  to  nothing  save  God  and  His 
stars ! 


THE  WOMAN'S  HALF-PROFITS 

O  ma  pauvre  Muse  !  est-ce  toi  ? 

FAME  in  Athens  and  Florence  took  the  form 
of  laurel,  in  London  it  is  represented  by 
'  Romeikes.'  Hyacinth  Rondel,  the  very 
latest  new  poet,  sat  one  evening  not  long 
ago  in  his  elegant  new  chambers,  with  a 
cloud  of  those  pleasant  witnesses  about  him, 
as  charmed  by  'the  rustle'  of  their  Moved 
Apollian  leaves '  as  though  they  had  been 
veritable  laurel  or  veritable  bank-notes.  His 
rooms  were  provided  with  all  those  distin- 
guished comforts  and  elegancies  proper  to  a 
success  that  may  any  moment  be  inter- 
viewed. Needless  to  say,  the  walls  had 
been  decorated  by  Mr.  Whistler,  and  there 
was  not  a  piece  of  furniture  in  the  room 
that  had  not  belonged  to  this  or  that  poet 
deceased.  Priceless  autograph  portraits  of 
all  the  leading  actors  and  actresses  littered 

35 


36  PROSE    FANCIES 

the  mantelshelf  with  a  reckless  prodigality, 
the  two  or  three  choice  etchings  were,  of 
course,  no  less  conspicuously  inscribed  to 
their  illustrious  confrere  by  the  artists — 
naturally,  the  very  latest  hatched  in  Paris. 
There  was  hardly  a  volume  in  the  elegant 
Chippendale  bookcases  not  similarly  in- 
scribed. Mr.  Rondel  would  as  soon  have 
thought  of  buying  a  book  as  of  paying  for  a 
stall.  To  the  eye  of  imagination,  therefore, 
there  was  not  an  article  in  the  room  which 
did  not  carry  a  little  trumpet  to  the  distin- 
guished poet's  honour  and  glory.  Hidden 
from  view  in  his  buhl  cabinet,  but  none  the 
less  vivid  to  his  sensitive  egoism,  were  those 
tenderer  trophies  of  his  power,  spoils  of  the 
chase,  which  the  adoring  feminine  had 
offered  up  at  his  shrine :  all  his  love-letters 
sorted  in  periods,  neatly  ribboned  and 
snugly  ensconced  in  various  sandalwood 
niches — much  as  urns  are  ranged  at  the 
Crematorium,  Woking — with  locks  of  hair  of 
many  hues.  He  loved  most  to  think  of 
those  letters  in  which  the  women  had  gladly 
sought  a  spiritual  suttee,  and  begged  him  to 
cement  the  stones  of  his  temple  of  fame  with 


THE   WOMAN'S   HALF-PROFITS     37 

the  blood  of  their  devoted  hearts.  To  have 
had  a  share  in  building  so  distinguished  a 
life — that  was  enough  for  them !  They 
asked  no  such  inconvenient  reward  as 
marriage :  indeed,  one  or  two  of  them  had 
already  obtained  that  boon  from  others.  To 
serve  their  purpose,  and  then,  if  it  must  be, 
to  be  forgotten,  or — wild  hope — to  be  em- 
balmed in  a  sonnet  sequence :  that  was 
reward  enough. 

In  the  midst  of  this  silent  and  yet  so 
eloquent  orchestra,  which  from  morn  to 
night  was  continually  crying  '  Glory,  glory, 
glory '  in  the  ear  of  the  self-enamoured  poet, 
Hyacinth  Rondel  was  sitting  one  evening. 
The  last  post  had  brought  him  the  above- 
mentioned  leaves  of  the  Romeike  laurel,  and 
he  sat  in  his  easiest  chair  by  the  bright  fire, 
adjusting  them,  metaphorically,  upon  his 
high  brow,  a  decanter  at  his  right-hand  and 
cigarette  smoke  curling  up  from  his  left.  At 
last  he  had  drained  all  the  honey  from  the 
last  paragraph,  and,  with  rustling  shining 
head,  he  turned  a  sweeping  triumphant  gaze 
around  his  room.  But,  to  his  surprise,  he 
found  himself  no  longer  alone.  Was  it  the 


38  PROSE    FANCIES 

Muse  in  dainty  modern  costume  and  deli- 
cately tinted  cheek  ?  Yes !  it  was  one  of 
those  discarded  Muses  who  sometimes 
remain  upon  the  poet's  hands  as  Fates. 

When  she  raised  her  veil  she  certainly 
looked  more  of  a  Fate  than  a  Muse.  Her 
expression  was  not  agreeable.  The  poet, 
afterwards  describing  the  incident  and  re- 
membering his  Dante,  spoke  of  her  in  an 
allegorical  sonnet  as  '  lady  of  terrible  aspect, 
and  symbolized  her  as  Nemesis. 

He  now  addressed  her  as  'Annette,'  and 
in  his  voice  were  four  notes  of  exclamation. 
She  came  closer  to  him,  and  very  quietly,  but 
with  an  accent  that  was  the  very  quintes- 
sence of  Ibsenism,  made  the  somewhat 
mercantile  statement :  '  I  have  come  for  my 
half-profits ! ' 

1  Half-profits !  What  do  you  mean  ?  Are 
you  mad  ? ' 

'  Not  in  the  least !  I  want  my  share  in 
the  profits  of  all  this  pretty  poetr)','  and  she 
contemptuously  ran  her  fingers  over  the 
several  slim  volumes  on  the  poet's  shelves 
which  represented  his  own  contribution  to 
English  literature. 


THE   WOMAN'S    HALF-PROFITS     39 

Rondel  began  to  comprehend,  but  he  was 
as  yet  too  surprised  to  answer. 

1  Don't  you  understand  ? '  she  went  on. 
'  It  takes  two  to  make  poetry  like  yours — 

"  They  steal  their  song  the  lips  that  sing 
From  lips  that  only  kiss  and  cling." 

Do  you  remember?  Have  I  quoted  cor- 
rectly ?  Yes,  here  it  is ! '  taking  down  a 
volume  entitled  Liber  Amorts,  the  passionate 
confession  which  had  first  brought  the  poet 
his  fame.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  several  ladies 
had  '  stood  '  for  this  series,  but  the  poet  had 
artfully  generalised  them  into  one  supreme 
Madonna,  whom  Annette  believed  to  be  her- 
self. Indeed,  she  had  furnished  the  warmest 
and  the  most  tragic  colouring.  Rondel,  how- 
ever, had  for  some  time  kept  his  address  a 
secret  from  Annette.  But  the  candle  set  upon 
a  hill  cannot  be  hid  :  fame  has  its  disadvan- 
tages. To  a  man  with  creditors  or  any  other 
form  of  '  a  past,'  it  is  no  little  dangerous  to 
have  his  portrait  in  the  Review  of  Reviews. 
A  well-known  publisher  is  an  ever-present 
danger.  By  some  such  means  Annette  had 
found  her  poet.  The  papers  could  not  be 
decorated  with  reviews  of  his  verse,  and  she 


40  PROSE    FANCIES 

not  come  across  some  of  them.  Indeed,  she 
had,  with  burning  cheek  and  stormy  bosom, 
recognised  herself  in  many  an  intimate  con- 
fession. It  was  her  hair,  her  face,  all  her 
beauty,  he  sang,  though  the  poems  were 
dedicated  to  another. 

She  turned  to  another  passage  as  she 
stood  there — '  How  pretty  it  sounds  in 
poetry  \ '  she  said,  and  began  to  read  : — 

"There  in  the  odorous  meadowsweet  afternoon, 

With  the  lark  like  the  dream  of  a  song  in  the  dreamy 

blue, 
All  the  air  abeat  with  the  wing  and  buzz  of  June, 

We  met — she  and  I,  I  and  she,"  [You  and  I,  I  and 

you.] 
"  And  there,  while  the  wild  rose  and  woodbine  deliciousness 

blended, 

We  kissed  and  we  kissed  and  we  kissed,  till  the  afternoon 
ended.     .     .     .'" 

Here  Rondel  at  last  interrupted — 
'  Woman  ! '   he  said,  '  are  your  cheeks  so 
painted    that   you   have    lost    all    sense    of 
shame  ? '     But  she  had  her  answer — 

'  Man !  are  you  so  great  that  you  have 
lost  the  sense  of  pity?  And  which  is  the 
greater  shame  :  to  publish  your  sins  in  large 
paper  and  take  royalties  for  them,  or  to  speak 
of  them,  just  you  and  I  together,  you  and 


THE  WOMAN'S  HALF-PROFITS  41 
I,  as  "there  in  the  odorous  meadowsweet 
afternoon  "  ?  ' 

'  Look  you,'  she  continued,  '  an  artist  pays 
his  model  at  least  a  shilling  an  hour,  and  it 
is  only  her  body  he  paints :  but  you  use 
body  and  soul,  and  offer  her  nothing.  Your 
blues  and  reds  are  the  colours  you  have 
stolen  from  her  eyes  and  her  heart — stolen, 
I  say,  for  the  painter  pays  so  much  a  tube 
for  his  colours,  so  much  an  hour  for  his 
model,  but  you ' 

'  I  give  you  immortality.  Poor  fly,  I  give 
you  amber,'  modestly  suggested  the  poet. 

But  Annette  repeated  the  word  '  Immor- 
tality ! '  with  a  scorn  that  almost  shook  the 
poet's  conceit,  and  thereupon  produced  an 
account,  which  ran  as  follows : — 

'  Mr.  Hyacinth  Rondel 

Dr.  to  Miss  Annette  Jones, 
For  moiety  of  the  following  royalties  : — 
Moonshine  and  Meadowsweet,    .         500  copies. 
Coral  and  Bells,  .         .         .         .         750      „ 
Liber  Amoris,  3  editions,     .         .      3,000      „ 
Forbidden  Fruit,  5  editions,        .      5,000      „ 


9,250  copies  at  is. 
=,£462,  i  os. 
Moiety  of  same  due  to  Miss  Jones,  ^231    5St> 


42  PROSE    FANCIES 

'  I  don't  mind  receipting  it  for  two  hun- 
dred and  thirty,'  she  said,  as  she  handed  it  to 
him. 

Hyacinth  was  completely  awakened  by 
this :  the  joke  was  growing  serious.  So  he 
at  once  roused  up  the  bully  in  him,  and 
ordered  her  out  of  his  rooms.  But  she 
smiled  at  his  threats,  and  still  held  out  her 
account.  At  last  he  tried  coaxing  :  he  even 
had  the  insolence  to  beg  her,  by  the  memory 
of  the  past  they  had  shared  together,  to  spare 
him.  He  assured  her  that  she  had  vastly 
overrated  his  profits,  that  fame  meant  far 
more  cry  than  wool :  that,  in  short,  he  was  up 
to  the  neck  in  difficulties  as  it  was,  and  really 
had  nothing  like  that  sum  in  his  possession. 

'  Very  well,  then,'  she  replied  at  last,  '  you 
must  marry  me  instead.  Either  the  money 
or  the  marriage.  Personally,  I  prefer  the 
money ' — Rondel's  egoism  twinged  like  a 
hollow  tooth — '  and  if  you  think  you  can 
escape  me  and  do  neither,  look  at  this ! '  and 
she  drew  a  revolver  from  her  pocket. 

'  They  are  all  loaded,'  she  added.  '  Now, 
which  is  it  to  be  ? ' 

Rondel  made  a  movement  as  if  to  snatch 


THE   WOMAN'S   HALF-PROFITS     43 

the  weapon  from  her,  but  she  sprang  back 
and  pointed  it  at  his  head. 

'  If  you  move,  I  fire.' 

Now  one  would  not  need  to  be  a  minor 
poet  to  be  a  coward  under  such  circum- 
stances. Rondel  could  see  that  Annette 
meant  what  she  said.  She  was  clearly  a 
desperate  woman,  with  no  great  passion  for 
life.  To  shoot  him  and  then  herself  would 
be  a  little  thing  in  the  present  state  of  her 
feelings.  Like  most  poets,  he  was  a  prudent 
man — he  hesitated,  leaning  with  closed  fist 
upon  the  table.  She  stood  firm. 

'  Come,'  she  said  at  length,  '  which  is  it  to 
be — the  revolver,  marriage,  or  the  money  ? ' 
She  ominously  clicked  the  trigger,  '  I  give 
you  five  minutes.' 

It  was  five  minutes  to  eleven.  The  clock 
ticked  on  while  the  two  still  stood  in  their 
absurdly  tragic  attitudes — he  still  hesitating, 
she  with  her  pistol  in  line  with  the  brain 
that  laid  the  golden  verse.  The  clock 
whirred  before  striking  the  hour.  Annette 
made  a  determined  movement.  Hyacinth 
looked  up,  he  saw  she  meant  it,  all  the  more 
for  the  mocking  indifference  of  her  expression. 


44  PROSE    FANCIES 

'Once    more — death,    marriage,     or     the 

money?' 

The  clock  struck. 

'  The  money,'  gasped  the  poet 

#  #  *  #  * 

But  Annette  still  kept  her  weapon  in  line. 

'  Your  cheque-book  ! '  she  said.  Rondel 
obeyed. 

'  Pay  Miss  Annette  Jones,  or  order,  the 
sum  of  two  hundred  and  thirty  pounds.  No, 
don't  cross  it ! ' 

Rondel  obeyed. 

'  Now,  toss  it  over  to  me.  You  observe  I 
still  hold  the  pistol/ 

Rondel  once  more  obeyed.  Then,  still 
keeping  him  under  cover  of  the  ugly-looking 
tube,  she  backed  towards  the  door. 

'  Good-bye,'  she  said.  '  Be  sure  I  shall 
look  out  for  your  next  volume.' 

Rondel,  bewildered  as  one  who  had  lived 
through  a  fairy-tale,  sank  into  his  chair. 
Did  such  ridiculous  things  happen  ?  He 
turned  to  his  cheque-book.  Yes,  there  was 
the  counterfoil,  fresh  as  a  new  wound,  from 
which  indeed  his  bank  account  was  profusely 
bleeding. 


THE   WOMAN'S   HALF-PROFITS     45 

Then  he  turned  to  his  laurels  :  but,  be- 
hold, they  were  all  withered. 

So,  after  a  while,  he  donned  hat  and  coat, 
and  went  forth  to  seek  a  flatterer  as  a  pick- 
me-up. 


GOOD  BISHOP  VALENTINE 

THE  reader  will  remember  how  Lamb 
imagines  him  as  a  rubicund  priest  of  Hymen, 
and  pictures  him  *  attended  with  thousands 
and  ten  thousands  of  little  loves,  and  the 
air  is 

"  Brush 'd  with  the  hiss  of  rustling  wings." 

Singing  Cupids  are  thy  choristers  and  thy 
precentors  ;  and  instead  of  the  crozier,  the 
mystical  arrow  is  borne  before  thee.'  Alas, 
who  indeed  would  have  expected  the  bitter 
historical  truth,  and  have  dreamed  that  poor 
Valentine,  instead  of  being  that  rosy  vision, 
was  one  of  the  Church's  most  unhappy 
martyrs?  Tradition  has  but  two  pieces  of 
information  about  him  :  that  during  the  reign 
of  Claudius  II.,  probably  in  the  year  270,  he 
was  *  first  beaten  with  heavy  clubs,  and  then 
beheaded  ' ;  and  likewise  that  he  was  a  man 
of  exceptional  chastity  of  character — a  fact 

46 


GOOD   BISHOP   VALENTINE    47 

that  may  be  considered  no  less  paradoxical 
in  regard  to  his  genial  reputation.  He  was 
certainly  the  last  man  to  have  been  the 
patron  saint  of  young  blood,  and  if  he  has 
any  cognisance  of  the  frivolities  done  in  his 
name,  the  knowledge  must  be  more  painful 
to  him  than  all  the  clubs  of  Claudius. 
Unhappy  saint  !  To  have  his  good  name 
murdered  also  !  To  be,  through  all  time,  the 
high-priest  of  that  very  '  paganism  '  which  he 
died  to  repudiate :  the  one  most  potent 
survival  throughout  Christian  times  of  the 
joyous  old  order  he  would  fain  supplant! 
Could  anything  be  more  characteristic  of  the 
whimsical  humour  of  Time,  which  loves 
nothing  better  than  to  make  a  laughing-stock 
of  human  symbolism  ?  The  savage  putting 
a  stray  dress-coat  to  solemn  sacerdotal  usage, 
or  taking  some  blackguard  of  a  Mulvaney 
for  a  very  god,  is  not  more  absurd  than 
mankind  thus  ignorantly  bringing  to  this 
poor  martyr  throughout  the  years  the  very 
last  offering  he  can  have  desired.  Surely  it 
must  have  rilled  his  shade  with  a  strange 
bewilderment  to  have  watched  us  year  by 
year  bringing  him  garlands  and  the  sweet 


48  PROSE    FANCIES 

incense  of  young  love,  to  have  seen  this  gay 
company  approach  his  shrine  with  laughter 
and  roses,  a  very  bacchanal,  where  he  had 
looked  for  sympathetic  sackcloth  and  ashes 
— surely  it  must  have  all  seemed  a  silly 
sacrilegious  jest  However,  he  is  long  since 
slandered  beyond  all  hope  of  restitution.  So 
long  as  the  spring  moves  in  the  blood,  lovers 
will  doubtless  continue  to  take  his  name  in 
vain,  and  feign  his  saintly  sanction  for  their 
charming  indiscretions.  Indeed,  he  is  fabled 
by  the  poets  to  be  responsible  for  the  billing 
and  cooing  of  the  whole  creation.  Everybody 
knows  that  the  birds,  too,  pair  on  St.  Valen- 
tine's Day.  We  have  many  a  poet's  word  for 
it.  Donne's  charming  lines,  for  instance  : 

'  All  the  air  is  thy  diocese, 
And  all  the  chirping  choristers 
And  other  birds  are  thy  parishioners  : 
Thou  marriest  every  year 

The  lyrique  lark,  and  the  grave  whispering  dove, 
The  sparrow,  that  neglects  his  life  for  love, 
The  household  bird  with  the  red  stomacher  ; 
Thou  mak'st  the  blackbird  speed  as  soon 
As  doth  the  goldfinch  or  the  halcyon.' 

In  fact,  it  would  appear  that  St.  Valentine 
was,  literally,  a  hedge-priest. 


GOOD   BISHOP  VALENTINE    49 

But  do  lovers,  one  wonders,  still  observe 
his  ancient,  though  mistaken,  rites  ?  Do  they 
still  have  a  care  whose  pretty  face  they 
should  first  set  eyes  upon  on  Valentine's 
morning,  like  Mistress  Pepys,  who  kept 
her  eyes  closed  the  whole  forenoon  lest  they 
should  portend  a  mesalliance  with  one  of 
those  tiresome  '  paynters '  at  work  on  the 
gilding  of  the  pictures  and  the  chimney- 
piece?  Or  do  they  with  throbbing  hearts 
'draw'  for  the  fateful  name,  or,  weighting 
little  inscribed  slips  of  paper  with  lead  or 
breadcrumbs,  and  dropping  them  into  a  basin 
of  water,  breathlessly  await  the  name  that 
shall  first  float  up  to  the  surface  ?  Do  they 
still  perform  that  terrible  feat  of  digestion, 
which  consisted  of  eating  a  hard-boiled  egg, 
shell  and  all,  to  inspire  the  presaging  dream, 
and  pin  five  bay-leaves  upon  their  pillows  to 
make  it  the  surer  ? 

We  are  told  they  do,  these  happy  super- 
stitious lovers,  though  probably  the  practices 
obtain  now  mostly  among  a  class  of  fair 
maids  who  have  none  of  Mrs.  Pepys'  fears  of 
'  paynters,'  and  who  are  not  averse  even  from 
a  bright  young  plumber.  Indeed,  it  is  to 


So  PROSE    FANCIES 

be  feared  that  the  one  sturdy  survival  of  St. 
Valentine  is  to  be  sought  in  the  '  ugly  valen- 
tine.' This  is  another  of  Time's  jests  :  to 
degrade  the  beautiful  and  distinguished,  and 
mock  at  old-time  sanctities  with  coarse 
burlesque.  We  see  it  constantly  in  the 
fortunes  of  old  streets  and  squares,  once 
graced  with  the  beau  and  the  sedan-chair, 
the  very  cynosure  of  the  polite  and  elegant 
world,  but  now  vocal  with  the  clamorous 
wrongs  of  the  charwoman  and  the  melancholy 
appeal  of  the  coster.  We  see  it,  too,  in  the 
ups  and  downs  of  words  once  aristocratic  or 
tender,  words  once  the  very  signet  of  polite 
conversation,  now  tossed  about  amid  the  very 
offal  of  language.  We  see  it  when  some 
noble  house,  an  illustrious  symbol  of  heroic 
honour,  the  ark  of  high  traditions,  finds  its 
reductio  ad  absurdum  in  some  hare-brained 
turf-lord,  who  defiles  its  memories  as  he  sells 
its  pictures.  But  no  lapse  could  be  more 
pitiful  than  the  end  of  St.  Valentine.  Once 
the  day  on  which  great  gentlemen  and  great 
ladies  exchanged  stately  and,  as  Pepys 
frequently  complained,  costly  compliments  ; 
when  the  ingenuity  of  love  tortured  itself  for 


GOOD   BISHOP   VALENTINE     51 

the  sweetest  conceit  wherein  to  express  the 
very  sweetest  thing  ;  the  May-day  of  the 
heart,  when  the  very  birds  were  Cupid's 
messengers,  and  all  the  world  wore  ribbons 
and  made  pretty  speeches.  What  is  it  now  ? 
The  festival  of  the  servants'  hall.  It  is  the 
sacred  day  set  apart  for  the  cook  to  tell  the 
housemaid,  in  vividly  illustrated  verse,  that 
she  need  have  no  fear  of  the  policeman 
thinking  twice  of  her ;  for  the  housemaid  to 
make  ungenerous  reflections  on  '  cookey's ' 
complexion  and  weight,  and  to  assure  that 
'  queen  of  the  larder  '  that  it  is  not  her,  but 
her  puddings,  that  attract  the  constabulary 
heart.  It  is  the  day  when  inoffensive  little 
tailors  receive  anonymous  letters  beginning 
'You  silly  snip,'  when  the  baker  is  unplea- 
santly reminded  of  his  immemorial  sobriquet 
of  '  Daddy  Dough,'  and  coarse  insult  breaks 
the  bricklayer's  manly  heart.  Perhaps 
of  all  its  symbols  the  most  typical  and 
popular  are :  a  nursemaid,  a  perambulator 
enclosing  twins,  and  a  gigantic  dragoon. 
In  fact,  we  are  faced  by  this  curious  de- 
velopment— that  the  day  once  sacred  to 
universal  compliment  is  now  mainly  dedi- 


52  PROSE    FANCIES 

cated  to  low  and  foolish  insult.      Oh,  that 
whirligig ! 

Do  true  lovers  still  remember  the  day  to 
keep  it  holy,  one  wonders  ?  Does  Ophelia 
still  sing  beneath  the  window,  and  do  the 
love-birds  still  carry  on  their  celestial  post- 
age ?  One  fears  that  all  have  gone  with  the 
sedan-chair,  the  stage-coach,  and  last  year's 
snow.  Will  the  true  lovers  go  next  ?  But, 
indeed,  a  florist  told  us  that  he  had  sold 
many  flowers  for  '  valentines '  this  year,  and 
that  the  prettier  practice  of  sending  flowers 
was,  he  thought,  supplanting  the  tawdry  and 
stereotyped  offering  of  cards.  Which  reminds 
one  of  an  old  verse  : 

'  The  violet  made  haste  to  appear, 

To  be  her  bosom  guest, 
With  first  primrose  that  grew  this  year 
I  purchas'd  from  her  breast ; 
To  me, 
Gave  she, 

Her  golden  lock  for  mine  ; 
My  ring  of  jet 
For  her  bracelet, 
I  gave  my  Valentine? 


IRRELEVANT  PEOPLE 

THERE  are  numberless  people  who  are, 
doubtless,  of  much  interest  and  charm — in 
their  proper  context.  That  context  we  feel, 
however,  is  not  our  society.  We  have  no 
objection  to  their  carrying  on  the  business  of 
human  beings,  so  long  as  they  allow  us  an 
uninterrupted  trading  of,  say,  a  hundred 
miles.  Within  that  charmed  and  charming 
circle  they  should  not  set  foot,  and  we  are 
quite  willing  in  addition,  for  them,  to  gird 
themselves  about  with  the  circumference  of 
another  thousand.  It  is  not  that  they  are 
disagreeable  or  stupid,  or  in  any  way 
obviously  objectionable.  Bores  are  more 
frequently  clever  than  dull,  and  the  only  all- 
round  definition  of  a  bore  is — The  Person 
We  Don't  Want.  Few  people  are  bores  at 
all  times  and  places,  and  indeed  one  might 
venture  on  the  charitable  axiom  :  that  when 

53 


54  PROSE    FANCIES 

people  bore  us  we  are  pretty  sure  to  be 
boring  them  at  the  same  time.  The  bore,  to 
attempt  a  further  definition,  is  simply  a 
fellow  human  being  out  of  his  element.  It 
is  said  by  travellers  from  distant  lands  that 
fishes  will  not  live  out  of  water.  It  is  a 
no  less  familiar  fact  that  certain  dull  metals 
need  to  be  placed  in  oxygen  to  show  off 
their  brilliant  parts.  So  is  it  with  the  bore  : 
set  him  in  the  oxygen  of  his  native  admir- 
ation, and  he  will  scintillate  like  a  human 
St.  Catherine  wheel,  though  in  your  society 
he  was  not  even  a  Chinese  cracker.  Every 
man  needs  his  own  stage  and  his  own 
audience. 

'  Hath  not  love 

Made  for  all  these  their  sweet  particular  air 
To  shine  in,  their  own  beams  and  names  to  bear, 
Their  ways  to  wander  and  their  wards  to  keep, 
Till  story  and  song  and  glory  and  all  things  sleep.' 

Mr.  Swinburne  asked  the  question  of  lovers, 
but  perhaps  it  is  none  the  less  applicable  to 
the  bore  or  irrelevant  person.  Yet  a  third 
definition  of  the  latter  here  suggests  itself. 
To  be  born  for  each  other  is,  obviously,  to 
be  lovers.  Well,  not  to  be  born  for  each 


IRRELEVANT    PEOPLE       55 

other  is  to  be  bores.  In  future,  let  us  not 
speak  unkindly  of  the  tame  bore,  let  us  say 
— '  We  were  not  born  for  each  other.' 

Relations  do  not,  perhaps,  invariably 
suggest  the  first  line  of  '  Endymion ' ;  in- 
deed, they  are,  one  fears,  but  infrequently 
celebrated  in  song.  But  the  same  word  in 
the  singular,  how  beautiful  it  is  !  Relation  !  * 
In  that  little  word  is  the  whole  secret  of  life. 
To  get  oneself  placed  in  perfect  harmony  of 
relation  with  the  world  around  us,  to  have 
nothing  in  our  lives  that  we  wouldn't  buy, 
to  possess  nothing  that  is  not  sensitive  to 
us,  ready  to  ring  a  fairy  chime  of  association 
at  our  slightest  touch :  no  irrelevant  book, 
picture,  acquaintance,  or  activity — ah  me ! 
you  may  well  say  it  is  an  ideal.  Yes,  it  is 
what  men  have  meant  by  El  Dorado,  The 
Promised  Land,  and  all  such  shy  haunts  of 
the  Beatific  Vision.  Probably  the  quest  of 
the  Philosopher's  Stone  is  not  more  wild. 
Yet  men  still  seek  that  precious  substitute 
for  Midas.  Brave  spirits !  Unconquerable 
idealists  !  Salt  of  the  earth  ! 

But  if  it  be  admitted  that  the  quest  of  the 
Perfect  Relation  (in  two  senses)  is  hopeless, 


56  PROSE    FANCIES 

yet  there  is  no  reason  why  we  should  not 
approach  as  near  to  it  as  we  can. 

We  can  at  least  begin  by  barring  the 
irrelevant  person — in  other  words,  choosing 
our  own  acquaintance.  Of  course,  we  have 
no  entire  free-will  in  so  important  a  matter. 
Free-will  is  like  the  proverbial  policeman, 
never  there  when  most  wanted.  There  are 
two  classes  of  more  or  less  irrelevant  per- 
sons that  cannot  be  entirely  avoided  :  our 
blood-relations,  and  our  business-relations 
— both  often  so  pathetically  distinct  from 
our  heart-relations  and  our  brain-rela- 
tions. Well,  our  business-relations  need  not 
trouble  us  over  much.  They  are  not,  as  the 
vermin-killer  advertisement  has  it,  '  pests  of 
the  household.'  They  come  out  only  during 
business  hours.  The  curse  of  the  blood- 
relation,  however,  is  that  he  infests  your 
leisure  moments  ;  and  you  must  notice  the 
pathos  of  that  verbal  distinction :  man 
measures  his  toil  by  'hours'  (office-hours), 
his  leisure  by  '  moments  ! ' 

But  let  not  the  reader  mistake  me  for  a 
Nero.  The  claims  of  a  certain  degree  of 
blood-relationship  I  not  only  admit,  but 


IRRELEVANT    PEOPLE       57 

welcome  as  a  sacred  joy.  Their  experience 
is  unhappy  for  whom  the  bonds  of  parentage, 
of  sisterhood  and  brotherhood,  will  not 
always  have  a  sort  of  involuntary  religion. 
If  a  man  should  not  exactly  be  tied  to  his 
mother's  apron-string,  he  should  all  his  life 
remain  tied  to  her  by  that  other  mysterious 
cord  which  no  knife  can  sever.  Uncles  and 
aunts  may,  under  certain  circumstances,  be 
regarded  as  sacred,  and  meet  for  occasional 
burnt-offerings ;  but  beyond  them  I  hold 
that  the  knot  of  blood-relationship  may  be 
regarded  as  Gordian,  and  ruthlessly  cut. 
Cousins  have  no  claims.  Indeed,  the  scale  of 
the  legacy  duties,  like  few  legalities,  follows 
the  natural  law.  The  further  removed,  the 
greater  tax  should  our  blood-relations  pay 
for  our  love,  or  our  legacy ;  but  the  heart- 
relation,  the  brain-relation  ('  the  stranger  in 
blood'),  he  alone  should  go  untaxed  alto- 
gether !  Alas,  the  Inland  Revenue  Commis- 
sioners would  charge  him  more  than  any, 
which  shows  that  their  above-mentioned 
touch  of  nature  was  but  a  fluke,  after  all. 

It    is    impossible    to  classify   the    multi- 
tude of  remaining  irrelevancies,  who,  were 


58  PROSE    FANCIES 

one  to  permit  them,  would  fall  upon  our 
leisure  like  locusts ;  but  possibly  '  friends 
of  the  family,'  '  friends  from  the  country,' 
and  'casuals'  would  include  the  most 
able-bodied.  Sentiment  apart,  old  school- 
fellows should,  if  possible,  be  avoided ;  and 
no  one  who  merely  knew  us  when  we  were 
babies  (really  a  very  limited  elementary 
acquaintance)  and  has  mistaken  us  ever 
since  should  be  admitted  within  the  gates — 
though  we  might  introduce  him  to  our  own 
baby  as  the  nearest  match.  The  child  is  not 
father  to  the  man.  It  was  a  merely  verbal 
paradox,  which  shows  Wordsworth's  ignor- 
ance of  humanity.  Let  me  especially  warn 
the  reader,  particularly  the  newly-married 
reader,  against  the  type  of  friend  from  the 
country  who,  so  soon  as  they  learn  you  have 
set  up  house  in  London,  suddenly  discovers 
an  interest  in  your  fortunes  which,  like 
certain  rivers,  has  run  underground  further 
than  you  can  remember.  They  write  and 
tell  you  that  they  are  thinking  of  coming  to 
town,  and  would  like  to  spend  a  few  days 
with  you.  They  leave  their  London  address 
vague.  It  has  the  look  of  a  blank  which  you 


IRRELEVANT    PEOPLE       59 

are  expected  to  fill  up.  You  shrewdly  sur- 
mise that,  so  to  say,  they  meditate  paying  a 
visit  to  Euston,  and  spending  a  fortnight 
with  you  on  the  way.  But  if  you  are  wise 
and  subtle  and  strong,  you  cut  this  acquaint- 
ance ruthlessly,  as  you  lop  a  branch.  Such 
are  the  dead  wood  of  your  life.  Cut  it  away 
and  cast  it  into  the  oven  of  oblivion.  Don't 
fear  to  hurt  it.  These  people  care  as  little 
for  you,  as  you  for  them.  All  they  want  is 
board  and  lodging,  and  if  you  give  in  to 
them,  you  may  be  an  amateur  hotel-keeper 
all  your  days. 

Another  '  word  to  the  newly-married.'  Be 
not  over-solicitous  of  wedding-presents. 
They  carry  a  terrible  rate  of  interest.  A 
silver  toast-rack  will  never  leave  you  a  Bank 
Holiday  secure,  and  a  breakfast  service 
means  at  least  a  fortnight's  '  change '  to  one 
or  more  irrelevant  persons  twice  a  year. 
They  have  been  known  to  stay  a  month 
on  the  strength  of  an  egg-boiler.  So,  be 
warned,  I  pray  you.  Wedding-presents  are 
but  a  form  of  loan,  which  you  are  expected 
to  pay  back,  with  compound  interest  at  50 
per  cent,  in  'hospitality,'  'entertainment,' 


60  PROSE    FANCIES 

and  your  still  more  precious  time.  For  the 
givers  of  wedding-presents  there  is  no  more 
profitable  form  of  investment.  But  you,  be 
wise,  and  buy  your  own. 

There  is  a  peculiar  joy  in  snubbing  irre- 
levant would-be  country  visitors.  It  is  the 
sweetest  exercise  of  the  will.  Especially, 
too,  if  they  are  conceited  persons  who  made 
sure  of  invitation.  It  adds  a  yet  deeper 
thrill  to  the  pleasure  if  you  are  able  to  invite 
some  other  friends  near  at  hand,  of  humbler 
mind  and  greater  interest,  whose  (maybe) 
shy  charms  are  not  flauntingly  revealed. 
'  Fancy  So-and-So  being  invited  !  I  shouldn't 
have  thought  they  had  anything  in  common.' 
How  sweet  is  the  imagination  of  that 
wounded  whisper.  It  makes  you  feel  like  a 
(German)  prince.  You  have  the  power  of 
making  happy  and  (even  better  in  some 
cases)  unhappy,  at  least,  as  Carlyle  would 
say,  '  to  the  extent  of  sixpence.' 

You  have  tasted  the  sweets  of  choosing 
your  own  friends,  and  snubbing  the  others. 
You  have  gone  so  far  towards  the  attainment 
of  the  harmonious  environment,  the  Perfect 
Relation.  Your  friends  shall  be  as  carefully 


IRRELEVANT    PEOPLE      61 

selected,  shall  mean  as  much  to  you  as  your 
books  and  flowers  and  pictures  ;  and  your 
leisure  shall  be  a  priest's  garden,  in  which 
none  but  the  chosen  may  walk. 

Yet,  in  spite  of  my  little  burst  of  Neroics, 
I  am  far  from  advising  a  cruel  treatment  of 
the  Irrelevant  Person.  Let  us  not  forget 
what  we  said  at  the  beginning,  that  he  is 
probably  an  interesting  person  in  the  wrong 
place.  He  has  taken  the  wrong  turning — 
into  your  company.  Do  unto  him  as  you 
would  he  might  do  unto  you.  Direct  him 
aright — that  is  to  say,  out  of  it !  Remem- 
ber, we  are  all  bores  in  certain  uncongenial 
social  climates :  all  stars  in  our  own  particu- 
lar milky  way.  So,  remember,  don't  be 
cruel — as  a  rule — to  the  Irrelevant  Person  ; 
but  just  smile  your  best  at  him,  and  whisper  : 
'  We  were  not  born  for  each  other.' 


THE  DEVILS  ON  THE 
NEEDLE 

.   .  .   '  these  things  are  life  : 
And  life,  some  say,  is  worthy  of  the  muse.' 

I 

THERE  is  a  famous  query  of  the  old  school- 
man at  which  we  have  all  flung  a  jest  in  our 
time  :  How  many  angels  can  dance  on  the 
point  of  a  needle?  In  a  world  with  so  many 
real  troubles  it  seems,  perhaps,  a  little  idle 
to  worry  too  long  over  the  question.  Yet 
in  the  mere  question,  putting  any  answer 
outside  possibility,  there  is  a  wonderful 
suggestiveness,  if  it  has  happened  to  come 
to  you  illuminated  by  experience.  It  be- 
comes a  little  clearer,  perhaps,  if  we  sub- 
stitute devils  for  angels.  A  friend  of  mine 
used  always  to  look  at  it  thus  inversely 
when  he  quarrelled  with  his  wife.  Forgive 

so  many  enigmas  to  start  with,  but  it  was 

62 


THE  DEVILS  ON  THE  NEEDLE     63 

this  way.  They  never  quarrelled  more  than 
three  times  a  year,  and  it  was  always  on  the 
very  smallest  trifle,  one  particular  trifle  too. 
On  the  great  things  of  life  they  were  at  one. 
It  was  but  a  tiny  point,  a  needle's  end  of 
difference,  on  which  they  disagreed,  and  it 
was  on  that  needle's  end  that  the  devils 
danced.  All  the  devils  of  hell,  you  would 
have  said.  At  any  rate,  you  would  have  no 
longer  wondered  why  the  old  philosopher 
put  so  odd  a  question,  for  you  had  only  to 
see  little  Dora's  face  lit  up  with  fury  over 
that  ridiculous  trifle  to  have  exclaimed  :  '  Is 
it  possible  that  so  many  devils  can  dance  on 
a  point  where  there  seems  hardly  footing  for 
a  frown  ? ' 

However,  so  it  was,  and  when  I  tell  you 
what  the  needle's  end  was,  you  will  probably 
not  think  me  worth  a  serious  person's 
attention.  That  I  shall,  of  course,  regret, 
but  it  was  simply  this  :  Dora  would  write 
with  a  ']'  pen — for  which  it  was  William's 
idiosyncrasy  to  have  an  unconquerable 
aversion.  She  might,  you  will  think,  have 
given  way  to  her  husband  on  so  absurd  a 
point,  a  mere  pen-point  of  disagreement. 


64  PROSE    FANCIES 

He  was  the  tenderest  of  husbands  in  every 
other  point.  There  is  nothing  that  love 
can  dream  that  he  was  not  capable  of 
doing  for  his  wife's  sake.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  it  was  equally  true  that  there 
can  be  no  other  wife  in  the  world  more 
devoted  than  Dora ;  with  her  also  there 
was  nothing  too  hard  for  love's  sake.  Could 
he  not  waive  so  ridiculous  a  blemish  ?  It 
was  little  enough  for  love  to  achieve, 
surely.  Yes,  strange  as  it  seems,  their  love 
was  equal  to  impossible  heroisms :  to  have 
died  for  each  other  had  been  easy,  but  to 
surrender  this  pen-point  was  impossible. 
And,  alas !  as  they  always  do,  the  devils 
found  out  this  needle's  end — and  danced. 
For  their  purpose  it  was  as  good  as  a  plat- 
form. It  gave  them  joy  indeed  to  think 
what  stupendous  powers  of  devilry  they 
could  concentrate  on  so  tiny  a  stage. 

It  was  a  sad  thing,  too,  that  Dora  and 
William  were  able  to  avoid  the  subject  three 
hundred  and  sixty-four  days  of  the  year,  but 
on  that  odd  day  it  was  sure  to  crop  up. 
Perhaps  they  had  been  out  late  the  night 
before,  and  their  nerves  were  against  them. 


THE  DEVILS  ON  THE  NEEDLE     65 

The  merest  accident  would  bring  it  on. 
Dora  would  ask  William  to  post  a  letter  for 
her  in  town.  Being  out  of  sorts  and  sus- 
ceptible to  the  silliest  irritation,  he  would 
not  be  able  to  resist  criticising  the  addres- 
sing. If  he  didn't  mention  it,  Dora  would 
notice  his  'expression.'  That  would  be 
'  quite  enough,'  you  may  be  sure.  Half  the 
tragedies  of  life  depend  on  '  expression.' 

*  Well ! '  she  would  say. 

'  Well  what  ? '  he  would  answer,  already 
beginning  to  tremble. 

'You  have  one  of  your  critical  moods  on 
again.' 

'  Not  at  all.     What 's  the  matter  ? ' 

'  You  have,  I  say.  .  .  .  Well,  why  do  you 
look  at  the  envelope  in  that  way  ?  I  know 
what  it  is,  well  enough.' 

'  If  you  know,  dear,  why  do  you  ask  ? ' 

'  Don't  try  to  be  sarcastic,  dear.  It  is  so 
vulgar.' 

'  I  hadn't  the  least  intention  of  being  so.' 

'Yes,  you  had.  .  .  .  Give  me  that  letter.' 

'  All  right' 

'Yes,  you  admire  every  woman's  writing 
but  your  wife's.' 

E 


66  PROSE    FANCIES 

'Don't  be  silly,  dear.  See,  I  don't  feel 
very  well  this  morning.  I  don't  want  to  be 
angry.' 

'  Angry  !  Be  angry  ;  what  does  it  matter 
to  me  ?  Be  as  angry  as  you  like.  I  wish  I 
had  never  seen  you.' 

'  Somewhat  of  a  non  sequitur,  is  it  not,  my 
love?' 

'  Don't  "  my  love  "  me.  With  your  nasty 
cool  sarcasm  ! ' 

'  Isn't  it  better  to  try  and  keep  cool  rather 
than  to  fly  into  a  temper  about  nothing? 
See,  I  know  you  are  a  little  nervous  this 
morning.  Let  us  be  friends  before  I  go.' 

'  I  have  no  wish  to  be  friends.' 

'  Dora ! ' 

William  would  then  lace  his  boots,  and 
don  his  coat  in  silence,  before  making  a  final 
effort  at  reconciliation. 

'  Well,  dear,  good-bye.  Perhaps  you  will 
love  me  again  by  the  time  I  get  home.' 

'  Perhaps  I  shan't  be  here  when  you  come 
home.' 

'  For  pity's  sake,  don't  begin  that  silly 
nonsense,  Dora.' 

'  It  isn't  silly  nonsense.     I   say  again — I 


THE  DEVILS  ON  THE  NEEDLE     67 

mayn't  be  here  when  you  come  home,  and  I 
mean  it.' 

'  Oh,  all  right  then.  Suppose  I  were  to 
say  that  I  won't  come  home  ?  ' 

*  I  should  be  quite  indifferent.' 
'Oh,  Dora!' 

'  I  would.  I  am  weary  of  our  continual 
quarrels.  I  can  bear  this  life  no  longer.'  (It 
was  actually  sunny  as  a  summer  sky.) 

'  Why,  it  was  only  last  night  you  said  how 
happy  we  were.' 

'  Yes,  but  I  didn't  mean  it.' 

<  Didn't  mean  it !  Don't  talk  like  that,  o» 
I  shall  lose  myself  completely.' 

'  You  will  lose  your  train  if  you  don't 
mind.  Don't  you  think  you  had  better  go  ? ' 

*  Can  you  really  talk  to  me  like  that  ?— 
me? — Oh,  Dora,  it  is  not  you  that  is  talking: 
it  is  some  devil  in  you.' 

Then  suddenly  irritated  beyond  all  control 
by  her  silly  little  set  face,  he  would  blurt  out 
a  sudden,  '  Oh,  very  well,  then  ! '  and  before 
she  was  aware  of  it,  the  door  would  have 
banged.  By  the  time  William  had  reached 
the  gate  he  would  be  half-way  through  with 
a  deed  of  assignment  in  favour  of  his  wife, 


68  PROSE    FANCIES 

who,  now  that  he  had  really  gone,  would 
watch  him  covertly  from  the  window  with 
slowly  thawing  heart 

So  the  devils  would  begin  their  dance: 
for  it  was  by  no  means  ended.  Of  course, 
William  would  come  home  as  usual ;  and 
yet,  though  the  sound  of  his  footstep  was 
the  one  sound  she  had  listened  for  all  day, 
Dora  would  immediately  begin  to  petrify 
again,  and  when  he  would  approach  her 
with  open  arms,  asking  her  to  forgive  and 
forget  the  morning,  she  would  demur  just 
long  enough  to  set  him  alight  again.  Heaven, 
how  the  devils  would  dance  then  !  And  the 
night  would  usually  end  with  them  lying 
sleepless  in  distant  beds. 

II 

To  attempt  tragedy  out  of  such  absurd 
material  is,  you  will  say,  merely  stupid. 
Well,  I  'm  sorry.  I  know  no  other  way  to 
make  it  save  life's  own,  and  I  know  that  the 
tragedy  of  William's  life  hung  upon  a  silly 
little  ink-stained  '  J '  pen.  I  would  pretend 
that  it  was  made  of  much  more  grandiose 
material  if  I  could.  But  the  facts  are  as  I 


THE  DEVILS  ON  THE  NEEDLE     69 

shall  tell  you.  And  surely  if  you  fulfil  that 
definition  of  man  which  describes  him  as  a 
reflective  being,  if  you  ever  think  on  life  at 
all,  you  must  have  noticed  how  even  the 
great  tragedies  that  go  in  purple  in  the 
great  poets  all  turn  on  things  no  less  trifling 
in  themselves,  all  come  of  people  pretending 
to  care  for  some  bauble  more  than  they 
really  do. 

And  you  must  have  wondered,  too,  as  you 
stood  awestruck  before  the  regal  magni- 
ficence, the  radiant  power,  the  unearthly 
beauty,  of  those  glorious  and  terrible  angels 
of  passion — that  splendid  creature  of  wrath, 
that  sorrow  wonderful  as  a  starlit  sky — you 
must  have  wondered  that  life  has  not  given 
these  noble  elementals  material  worthier  of 
their  fiery  operation  than  the  paltry  concerns 
of  humanity  ;  just  as  you  may  have  wondered 
too,  that  so  god-like  a  thing  as  fire  should 
find  nothing  worthier  of  its  divine  fury  than 
the  ugly  accumulations  of  man. 

At  any  rate,  I  know  that  all  the  sorrow 
that  saddens,  sanctifies,  and  sometimes 
terrifies  my  friend,  centres  round  that  silly 
little  '  J '  pen.  The  difference  is  that  the 


;o  PROSE    FANCIES 

angels  dance  on  its  point  now,  instead  of  the 
devils  ;  but  it  is  too  late. 

A  night  of  unhappiness  had  ended  once 
more  as  I  described.  The  long  darkness  had 
slowly  passed,  and  morning,  sunny  with 
forgiveness,  had  come  at  length.  William's 
heart  yearned  for  his  wife  in  the  singing  of 
the  birds.  He  would  first  slip  down  into 
the  garden  and  gather  her  some  fresh 
flowers,  then  steal  with  them  into  the  room 
and  kiss  her  little  sulky  mouth  till  she 
awoke ;  and,  before  she  remembered  their 
sorrow,  her  eyes  would  see  the  flowers. 

It  was  a  lover's  simple  thought,  sweeter 
even  than  the  flowers  he  had  soon  gathered. 

But,  then,  reader,  why  tease  you  with 
transparent  secrets  ?  You  know  that  Dora 
could  not  smell  the  flowers. 

You  know  that  Death  had  come  to  dance 
with  the  devils  that  night,  and  that  Dora 
and  William  would  quarrel  about  little  '  J  ' 
pens  no  more  for  ever, 


POETS  AND  PUBLISHERS 


A  SERIOUS  theme  demands  serious  treat- 
ment. Let  us,  therefore,  begin  with  defini- 
tions. What  is  a  poet?  and  what  is  a 
publisher?  Popularly  speaking,  a  poet  is  a 
fool,  and  a  publisher  is  a  knave.  At  least, 
I  am  hardly  wrong  in  saying  that  such  is 
the  literal  assumption  of  the  Incorporated 
Society  of  Authors,  a  body  well  acquainted 
with  both.  Indeed,  that  may  be  said  to  be 
its  working  hypothesis,  the  very  postulate 
of  its  existence. 

Of  course,  there  are  other  definitions  of 
both.  It  is  not  so  the  maiden  of  seventeen 
defines  a  poet,  as  she  looks  up  to  him  with 
brimming  eyes  in  the  summer  sunset  and 
calls  him  'her  Byron.'  It  is  not  so  the 
embryo  Chatterton  defines  him,  chained  to 
an  office  stool  in  some  sooty  provincial 

71 


72  PROSE    FANCIES 

town,  dreaming  of  Fleet  Street  as  of  a 
shining  thoroughfare  in  the  New  Jerusalem, 
where  move  authors  and  poets,  angelic 
beings,  in  'solemn  troops  and  sweet  socie- 
ties.' For,  indeed,  was  that  not  the  dream 
of  all  of  us  ?  For  my  part,  I  remember  my 
first,  most  beautiful,  delusion,  was  that  poets 
belonged  only  to  the  golden  prime  of 
the  world,  and  that,  like  miracles,  they  had 
long  ceased  before  the  present  age.  And  I 
very  well  recall  my  curious  bewilderment 
when,  one  day  in  a  bookseller's,  a  friendly 
schoolmaster  took  up  a  new  volume  of  Mr. 
Swinburne's  and  told  me  that  it  was  by  the 
new  great  poet.  How  wonderful  that  little 
incident  made  the  world  for  me !  Real 
poets  actually  existing  in  this  unromantic 
to-day!  If  you  had  told  me  of  a  mermaid, 
or  a  wood-nymph,  or  of  the  philosopher's 
stone  as  apprehensible  wonders,  I  should 
not  have  marvelled  more.  While  a  single 
poet  existed  in  the  land,  who  could  say 
that  the  kingdom  of  Romance  was  all  let 
out  in  building  lots,  or  that  the  steam 
whistle  had  quite  '  frighted  away  the  Dryads 
and  the  Fauns.' 


POETS    AND    PUBLISHERS     73 

Since  then  I  have  taken  up  the  reviewing 
of  minor  verse  as  a  part  of  my  livelihood, 
and  where  I  once  saw  the  New  Jerusalem 
I  see  now  the  New  Journalism. 

There  are,  doubtless,  many  who  still  cherish 
that  boyish  dream  of  the  poet.  He  still 
stalks  through  the  popular  imagination  with 
his  Spanish  hat  and  cloak,  his  amaranthine 
locks,  his  finely-frenzied  eyes,  and  his  Alas- 
tor-like  forgetfulness  of  his  meals.  But  only, 
it  is  to  be  feared,  for  a  little  time.  For  the 
latter-day  poet  is  doing  his  best  to  dissipate 
that  venerable  tradition.  Bitten  by  the 
modern  passion  for  uniformity,  he  has 
French-cropped  those  locks,  in  which,  as 
truly  as  with  Samson,  lay  his  strength,  he 
has  discarded  his  sombrero  for  a  Lincoln 
and  Bennett,  he  cultivates  a  silky  moustache, 
a  glossy  boot,  and  has  generally  given  him- 
self into  the  hands  of  the  West-End  tailor. 
Stung  beyond  endurance  by  taunts  of  his 
unpracticality,  he  enters  Parliament,  edits 
papers,  keeps  accounts,  and  is  in  every  way 
a  better  business  man  than  his  publisher. 

This  is  all  very  well  for  a  little  time.  The 
contrast  amuses  by  its  piquancy.  To  write 


74  PROSE    FANCIES 

of  wild  and  whirling  things  in  your  books, 
but  in  public  life  to  be  associated  with 
nothing  more  wild  and  whirling  than  a 
shirt-fronted  eye-glassed  hansom ;  to  be 
at  heart  an  Alastor,  but  in  appearance  a 
bank-clerk,  delights  an  age  of  paradox. 

But,  though  it  may  pay  for  a  while^  it 
will,  I  am  sure,  prove  a  disastrous  policy 
in  the  long  run.  The  poet  unborn  shall,  I 
am  certain,  rue  it.  The  next  generation  of 
poets  (or,  indeed,  writers  generally)  will  reap 
a  sorrowful  harvest  from  the  gratuitous  dis- 
illusionment, with  which  the  present  genera- 
tion is  so  eager  to  indulge  the  curiosity,  and 
flatter  the  mediocrity,  of  the  public.  The 
public,  like  the  big  baby  it  is,  is  continually 
crying  '  to  see  the  wheels  go  round/  and  for 
a  time  the  exhibition  of,  so  to  say,  the 
'works'  of  poet  and  novelist  is  profitable. 
But  a  time  will  come  when,  with  its  curiosity 
sated,  the  public  will  turn  upon  the  poet, 
and  throw  into  his  face,  on  his  own  authority, 
that  he  is  but  as  they  are,  that  his  airs  of 
inspiration  and  divine  right  are  humbug. 
And  in  that  day  the  poet  will  block  his  silk 
hat,  will  shave  away  the  silken  moustache, 


POETS   AND   PUBLISHERS     75 

will  get  him  a  bottle  of  Mrs.  Allen's  Hair 
Restorer,  and  betake  himself  to  the  sombrero 
of  his  ancestors — but  it  will  be  all  too  late. 
The  cat  will  have  been  irrecoverably  let  out 
of  the  bag,  the  mystery  of  the  poet  as 
exploded  as  the  mysteries  of  Eleusis. 

Tennyson  knew  better.  To  use  the  word 
in  its  mediaeval  sense,  he  respected  the 
'mystery'  of  poetry.  Instinctively,  doubt- 
less, but  also,  I  should  imagine,  deliberately, 
he  all  his  life  lived  up  to  the  traditional 
type  of  the  poet,  and  kept  between  him  and 
his  public  a  proper  veil  of  Sinaitic  mist. 
You  remember  Browning's  picture  of  the 
mysterious  poet  'you  saw  go  up  and  down 
Valladolid,'  and  the  awestruck  rumours 
that  were  whispered  about  him — how,  for 
instance — 

'  If  you  tracked  him  to  his  home,  down  lanes 
Beyond  the  Jewry,  and  as  clean  to  pace, 
You  found  he  ate  his  supper  in  a  room 
Blazing  with  lights,  four  Titians  on  the  wall, 
And  twenty  naked  girls  to  change  his  plate  ! ' 

That  is  the  kind  of  thing  the  public  likes  to 
hear  of  its  poets.  That  is  something  like 
a  poet.  Inquisitive  the  public  always  will 
be,  but  it  is  a  mistake  to  indulge  rather 


76  PROSE    FANCIES 

than  to  pique  its  curiosity.  Tennyson 
respected  the  wishes  of  his  public  in  this 
matter,  and,  not  only  in  his  dress  and  his 
dramatic  seclusion,  but  surely  in  his  obstin- 
ate avoidance  of  prose-work  of  any  kind 
we  have  a  subtler  expression  of  his  careful- 
ness for  fame.  It  is  a  mistake  for  a  poet 
to  write  prose,  however  good,  for  it  is  a 
charming  illusion  of  the  public  that,  com- 
paratively speaking,  any  one  can  write  prose. 
It  is  an  earthly  accomplishment,  it  is  as 
walking  is  to  flying — is  it  not  stigmatised 
'  pedestrian  ? '  Now,  your  true  Bird  of 
Paradise,  which  is  the  poet,  must,  meta- 
phorically speaking,  have  no  legs  —  as 
Adrian  Harley  said  was  the  case  with 
the  women  in  Richard  Feverel's  poems. 
He  must  never  be  seen  to  walk  in  prose, 
for  his  part  is,  '  pinnacled  dim  in  the 
intense  inane,'  to  hang  aloft  and  warble  the 
unpremeditated  lay,  without  erasure  or  blot. 
This  is,  I  am  sure,  not  fanciful,  for  two  or 
three  modern  instances,  which  I  am  far  too 
considerate  to  name,  illustrate  its  truth. 
Unless  you  are  a  very  great  person  indeed, 
the  surest  way  to  lose  a  reputation  as  poet 


POETS   AND   PUBLISHERS    77 

is  to  gain  one  as  critic.  It  is  true  that  for 
a  time  one  may  help  the  other,  and  that  if 
you  are  very  fecund,  and  let  your  poetical 
issues  keep  pace  with  your  critical,  you  may 
even  avoid  the  catastrophe  altogether ;  but 
it  is  an  unmistakable  risk,  and  if  in  the 
end  you  are  not  catalogued  as  a  great  critic, 
you  will  assuredly  be  set  down  as  a  minor 
poet :  whereas  if  you  had  stuck  to  your  last, 
there  is  no  telling  what  fame  might  not  have 
been  yours.  Limitation,  not  versatility,  is 
the  fashion  to-day.  The  man  with  the  one 
talent,  not  the  five,  is  the  hero  of  the  hour. 

Besides,  this  sudden  change  of  his  spots 
on  the  part  of  the  poet  is  unfair  to  the 
publisher,  who  is  thus  apt  to  find  himself 
surprised  out  of  his  just  gain.  For,  at  the 
present  moment,  I  would  back  almost  any 
poet  of  my  acquaintance  against  any  pub- 
lisher in  a  matter  of  business.  This  is 
unfair,  for  the  publisher  is  a  being  slow  to 
move,  slow  to  take  in  changed  conditions, 
always  two  generations,  at  least,  behind  his 
authors.  Consequently,  this  sudden  develop- 
ment of  capacity  on  the  part  of  the  poet  is 
liable  to  take  him  unprepared,  and  the  mere 


78  PROSE    FANCIES 

apparition  of  a  poet  who  can  add  up  a 
pounds  shillings  and  pence  column  offhand 
might  well  induce  apoplexy.  Yet  it  is  to  be 
feared  that  that  providence  which  arms 
every  evil  thing  with  its  fang,  has  so  pro- 
tected the  publisher  with  an  instinctive 
dread  of  verse  in  any  form,  and  especially 
in  manuscript,  that  he  has,  after  all,  little 
to  fear  from  the  poet's  new  gifts. 

II 

But,  indeed,  my  image  just  now  was  both 
uncomplimentary  and  unjust :  for,  parallel 
with  the  change  in  the  poet  to  which  I  have 
referred,  a  still  more  unnatural  change  is 
making  itself  apparent  in  the  type  of  the 
publisher.  It  would  almost  seem  as  if  the 
two  are  changing  places.  Instead  of  the  poet 
humbly  waiting,  hat  in  hand,  kicking  his 
heels  for  half-a-day  in  the  publisher's  office, 
it  is  the  publisher  who  seeks  him,  who  writes 
for  appointments  at  his  private  house,  or  in- 
vites him  to  dinner.  Yet  it  behoves  the  poet 
to  be  on  his  guard.  A  publisher,  like  another 
personage,  has  many  shapes  of  beguile- 
ment,  and  it  is  not  unlikely  that  this  flatter- 


POETS  AND  PUBLISHERS  79 
ing  deference  is  but  another  wile  to  entrap 
the  unwary.  There  is  no  way  of  circumvent- 
ing the  dreamer  so  subtle  as  to  flatter  his 
business  qualities.  We  all  like  to  be  praised 
for  the  something  we  cannot  do.  It  is  for 
this  reason  that  Mr.  Stevenson  interferes  with 
Samoan  politics,  when  he  should  be  writing 
romances — just  the  desire  of  the  dreamer  to 
play  the  man  of  action. 

But  I  am  not  going  to  weary  you  by 
indulging  in  the  stale  old  diatribes  against 
the  publisher.  For,  to  speak  seriously  the 
honest  truth,  I  think  they  are  in  the  main  a 
very  much  abused  race.  Thackeray  put  the 
matter  with  a  good  deal  of  common-sense,  in 
that  scene  in  '  Pendennis,'  where  Pen  and 
Warrington  walk  home  together  from  the 
Fleet  prison,  after  hearing  Captain  Shandon 
read  that  brilliant  prospectus  of  the  Pall  Mall 
Gazette,  which  he  had  written  for  bookseller 
Bungay,  and  for  which  that  gentleman  dis- 
bursed him  a  £$  note  on  the  spot.  Pen,  you 
will  remember,  was  full  of  the  oppressions  of 
genius,  of  Apollo  being  tied  down  to  such  an 
Admetus  as  Bungay  Warrington,  however, 
took  a  maturer  view  of  the  matter. 


8o  PROSE    FANCIES 

'  A  fiddlestick  about  men  of  genius  ! '  he 
exclaimed,  '  I  deny  that  there  are  so  many 
geniuses  as  people  who  whimper  about  the 
fate  of  men  of  letters  assert  there  are.  There 
are  thousands  of  clever  fellows  in  the  world 
who  could,  if  they  would,  turn  verses,  write 
articles,  read  books,  and  deliver  a  judgment 
upon  them  ;  the  talk  of  professional  critics 
and  writers  is  not  a  whit  more  brilliant,  or 
profound,  or  amusing  than  that  of  any  other 
society  of  educated  people.  If  a  lawyer,  or  a 
soldier,  or  a  parson  outruns  his  income,  and 
does  not  pay  his  bills,  he  must  go  to  gaol  ; 
and  an  author  must  go  too.  If  an  author 
fuddles  himself,  I  don't  know  why  he  should 
be  let  off  a  headache  the  next  morning — if 
he  orders  a  coat  from  the  tailor's,  why  he 
shouldn't  pay  for  it.  .  .  .' 

Dr.  Johnson,  who  had  no  great  reason 
to  be  prejudiced  in  their  favour,  defined 
booksellers  as  '  the  patrons  of  literature,'  and 
M.  Anatole  France  has  recently  said  that  '  a 
great  publisher  is  a  kind  of  Minister  for  belles- 
lettres?  Such  definitions  are,  doubtless,  pro- 
phecies of  the  ideal  rather  than  descriptions  of 
the  actual.  Yet,  fairly  dealt  with,  the  history 


POETS   AND   PUBLISHERS     81 

of  publishing  would  show  a  much  nearer 
living  up  to  them  on  the  part  of  publishers 
than  the  poets  and  their  sentimental  sym- 
pathisers are  inclined  to  admit  We  hear 
a  great  deal  of  Milton  getting  £10  for  Para- 
dise Lost,  and  the  Tonsons  riding  in  their 
carriage,  but  seldom  of  Cottle  adventuring 
thirty  guineas  on  Coleridge's  early  poems,  or 
the  Jacksons  giving  untried  boys  £10 — or, 
according  to  some  accounts,  £20 — for  Poems 
by  Two  Brothers. 

To  open  the  case  for  the  bookseller  or  the 
publisher.  The  poet,  to  start  with,  bases  his 
familiar  complaints  on  a  wilful  disregard  of 
the  relation  which  poetry  bears  to  average 
humanity.  You  often  hear  him  express 
indignant  surprise  that  the  sale  of  butcher's 
meat  should  be  a  more  lucrative  business 
than  the  sale  of  poetry.  But,  surely,  to  argue 
thus  is  to  manifest  a  most  absurd  misappre- 
hension of  the  facts  of  life.  Wordsworth  says 
that  'we  live  by  admiration,  joy,  and  love.' 
So  doubtless  we  do  :  but  we  live  far  more 
by  butcher's  meat  and  Burton  ale.  Poetry  is 
but  a  preparation  of  opium  distilled  by  a 
minority  for  a  minority.  The  poet  may  test 
F 


82  PROSE    FANCIES 

the  case  by  the  relative  amounts  he  pays  his 
butcher  and  his  bookseller.  So  far  as  I  know, 
he  pays  as  little  for  his  poetry  as  possible, 
and  never  buys  a  volume  by  a  brother-singer 
till  he  has  vainly  tried  six  different  ways  to 
get  a  presentation  copy.  The  poet  seems 
incapable  of  mastering  the  rudimentary  truth 
that  ethereals  must  be  based  on  materials. 
'  No  song,  no  supper '  is  the  old  saw.  It  is 
equally  true  reversed — no  supper,  no  song. 
The  empty-stomach  theory  of  creation  is  a 
cruel  fallacy,  though  undoubtedly  hunger  has 
sometimes  been  the  spur  which  the  clear  soul 
doth  raise. 

The  conditions  of  existence  compel  the 
publisher  to  be  a  tradesman  on  the  same 
material  basis  as  any  other.  Ideally,  a  poem, 
like  any  other  beautiful  thing,  is  beyond 
price ;  but,  practically,  its  value  depends  on 
the  number  of  individuals  who  can  be 
prevailed  upon  to  purchase  it.  In  its  ethereal 
— otherwise  its  unprinted — state,  it  is  only 
subject  to  the  laws  of  the  celestial  ether,  one 
of  which  is  that  it  yields  no  money  ;  properly 
speaking,  money  is  there  an  irrelevant  condi- 
tion. Byron,  you  remember,  would  not  for 


POETS   AND   PUBLISHERS    83 

a  long  time  accept  any  money  from  Murray 
for  his  poems,  successful  as  they  were.  He 
had  a  proper  sense  of  the  indignity  of  selling 
the  children  of  his  soul.  The  incongruity  is 
much  as  though  we  might  go  to  Portland 
Road  and  buy  an  angel,  just  as  we  buy  a 
parrot.  The  transactions  of  poetry  and  of  sale 
are  on  two  different  planes.  But  so  soon  as, 
shall  we  say,  you  debase  poetry  by  bringing 
it  down  to  the  lower  plane,  it  becomes 
subject  to  the  laws  of  that  plane.  An  un- 
printed  poem  is  a  spiritual  thing,  but  a 
printed  poem  is  subject  to  the  laws  of  matter. 
In  the  heaven  of  the  poet's  imagination  there 
are  no  printers  and  paper-makers,  no  binders, 
no  discounts  to  the  trade  and  thirteen  to  the 
dozen  ;  but  on  earth,  where  alone,  so  far  as 
we  know,  books  exist,  these  terrestrial  beings 
and  conditions  are  of  paramount  importance, 
and  cannot  be  ignored.  It  may  be  perfectly 
true  that  a  certain  poem  is  so  fine  that,  in  a 
properly  constituted  cosmogony,  it  ought  to 
support  you  to  the  end  of  your  days  ;  but  is 
the  publisher  to  blame  because,  in  spite  of 
its  manifest  genius,  he  can  sell  no  more 
than  500  copies  ? 


84  PROSE    FANCIES 

Then,  to  take  another  point  of  view,  it  is,  I 
think,  quite  demonstrable  that,  compared 
with  the  men  of  many  other  callings,  a  poet 
who  can  get  his  verses  accepted  is  very  well 
paid.  Take  a  typical  instance.  You  spend 
an  absolutely  beatific  evening  with  Clarinda 
in  the  moonlit  woodland.  You  go  home 
and  relieve  your  emotions  in  a  sonnet,  which, 
we  will  say,  at  a  generous  allowance,  takes 
you  half-an-hour  to  write.  Next  morning 
in  that  cold  calculating  mood  for  which  no 
business  man  can  match  a  poet,  you  copy  it 
out  fair  and  send  it  to  a  friendly  editor. 
Perhaps  out  of  Clarinda  alone  you  beget  a 
sonnet  a  week,  which  at  £2,  2s.  a  week  is 
.£109,43.  a  year — not  to  speak  of  Phyllis  and 
Dulcinea.  At  any  rate,  take  that  one  sonnet. 
For  an  evening  with  Clarinda,  for  which 
alone  you  would  have  paid  the  sum,  and  for 
a  beggarly  half-hour's  work,  you  receive  as 
much  as  many  a  City  clerk  earns  by  six  hard 
days'  work,  eight  hours  to  the  dreary  day, 
with  perhaps  a  family  to  keep  and  a  railway 
contract  to  pay  for.  Half-an-hour's  work,  and 
if  you  can  live  on  £2,  2s.  a  week,  the  rest  of 
your  time  is  free  as  air!  Moreover,  you  have 


POETS   AND   PUBLISHERS    85 

the  option  of  going  about  with  a  feeling  that 
you  are  a  being  vastly  superior  to  your 
fellows,  because  forsooth  you  can  string 
fourteen  lines  together  in  decent  Petrarcan 
form,  and  they  cannot.  And  to  return  for  a 
moment  to  Clarinda :  it  seems  to  me  that 
your  publisher,  with  all  his  ill-gotten  gains, 
compares  favourably  with  you  in  your  treat- 
ment of  your  partner  in  the  production 
of  that  sonnet  What  about  the  woman's 
half-profits  in  the  matter  ?  For,  remember, 
if  the  publisher  depends  on  the  brains  of  the 
poet,  the  poet  is  no  less  dependent  on  the 
heart  of  the  woman.  It  is  from  woman,  in 
nine  cases  out  of  ten,  that  the  poets  have 
drawn  their  inspiration.  And  how  have 
they,  in  eight  cases  out  of  this  nine,  treated 
her  ?  The  story  is  but  too  familiar.  Will 
it  always  seem  so  much  worse  to  pick  a 
man's  brains  than  to  break  a  woman's  heart  ? 
We  touched  just  now  on  the  arrogance  of 
the  poet  It  is  one  of  the  most  foolish  and 
distasteful  of  his  faults,  and  one  which  unfor- 
tunately the  world  has  conspired  from  time 
immemorial  to  confirm.  He  has  been  too 
long  the  spoiled  child,  too  long  allowed  to 


86  PROSE    FANCIES 

think  that  anything  becomes  him,  too  long 
allowed  to  ride  rough-shod  over  the  neck  01 
the  average  man. 

Mrs.  Browning,  in  Aurora  Leigh,  while 
celebrating  the  poet,  sneers  at '  your  common 
men '  who  '  lay  telegraphs,  gauge  railroads, 
reign,  reap,  dine.'  But  why  ?  All  these — 
with,  perhaps,  the  exception  of  reigning — 
are  very  proper  and  necessary  things  to  be 
done,  and  any  one  of  them,  done  in  the 
true  spirit  of  work,  is  every  bit  as  dignified 
as  the  writing  of  poetry,  and  often,  I  am 
afraid,  a  great  deal  more  so.  This  scorn  of 
the  common  man  is  but  another  instance  of 
the  poet's  ignorance  of  the  facts  of  life  and 
the  relations  of  things.  The  hysterical  bitter- 
ness with  which  certain  sections  of  modern 
people  of  taste  are  constantly  girding  at  the 
bourgeois — which,  indeed,  as  Omar  Khayyam 
says,  heeds  '  As  the  sea's  self  should  heed  a 
pebble-cast ' — is  one  of  the  most  melancholy 
of  recent  literary  phenomena.  It  was  not 
so  the  great  masters  treated  the  common 
man,  nor  any  full-blooded  age.  But  the 
torch  of  taste  has  for  the  moment  fallen  into 
the  hands  of  little  men,  ansemic  and  atra- 


POETS   AND   PUBLISHERS    87 

bilious,  with  neither  laughter  nor  pity  in 
their  hearts. 

Besides,  how  easy  it  is  to  misjudge  your 
so-called  'common  man.'  That  fat  undis- 
tinguished-looking Briton  in  the  corner  of 
the  omnibus  is  as  likely  as  not  Mr.  So-and- 
So,  the  distinguished  poet ;  and  who  but 
those  with  the  divining-rod  of  a  kind  heart 
know  what  refined  sensibility  and  nobility  of 
character  may  lurk  under  an  extremely 
bourgeois  exterior  ? 

We  live  in  an  age  of  every  man  his  own 
priest  and  his  own  lawyer.  At  a  pinch 
we  can  very  well  be  every  man  his  own 
poet  If  the  whole  supercilious  crew  of 
modern  men  of  letters,  artists,  and  critics 
were  wiped  off  the  earth  to-morrow,  the 
world  would  be  hardly  conscious  of  the  loss. 
Nay,  if  even  the  entire  artistic  accumulation 
of  the  past  were  to  be  suddenly  swallowed  up, 
it  would  be  little  worse  off.  For  the  world 
is  more  beautiful  and  wonderful  than  any- 
thing that  has  ever  been  written  about  it,  and 
the  most  glorious  picture  is  not  so  beautiful 
as  the  face  of  a  spring  morning. 


APOLLO'S    MARKET 

THE  question  is  sometimes  asked — '  How 
poets  sell  ? '  One  feels  inclined  idealistically 
to  ask,  '  Ought  poets  to  sell  ? '  What  can 
poets  want  with  money  ? — dear  children  of 
the  rainbow,  who  from  time  immemorial 

...  on  honeydew  have  fed 
And  drunk  the  milk  of  Paradise. 

Have  you  never  felt  a  sort  of  absurdity  in 
paying  for  a  rose — especially  if  you  paid  in 
copper?  To  pay  for  a  thing  of  beauty  in 
coin  of  extreme  ugliness  !  There  is  obviously 
no  equality  of  exchange  in  the  transaction. 
In  fact,  it  is  little  short  of  an  insult  to  the 
flower-girl  to  pretend  that  you  thus  satisfy 
the  obligation.  Far  better  let  her  give  it 
you — for  the  love  of  beauty — as  very  likely, 
if  you  explained  the  incongruity,  she  would 
be  glad  to  do  :  for  flower-girls,  no  doubt,  like 


APOLLO'S    MARKET        89 

every  one  else,  can  only  have  chosen  their 
particular  profession  because  of  its  being  a 
joy  for  ever.  There  might  be  fitness  in 
offering  a  kiss  on  account,  though  that,  of 
course,  would  depend  on  the  flower-girl.  To 
buy  other  things  with  flowers  were  not  so 
incongruous.  I  have  often  thought  of  trying 
my  tobacconist  with  a  tulip ;  and  certainly 
an  orchid — no  very  rare  one  either — should 
cover  one's  household  expenses  for  a  week, 
if  not  a  fortnight 

Omar  Khayydm  used  to  wonder  what 
the  vintners  buy  'one  half  so  precious  as 
the  stuff  they  sell.'  It  is  surely  natural  to 
wonder  in  like  manner  of  the  poet.  What 
have  we  to  offer  in  exchange  for  his  price- 
less manna?  One  feels  that  he  should  be 
paid  on  the  mercantile  principles  of  '  Goblin 
Market.'  Said  Laura: — 


'  Good  folk,  I  have  no  coin  ; 
To  take  were  to  purloin  ; 
I  have  no  copper  in  my  purse, 
I  have  no  silver  either.  .  .  ' 


Copper !  silver  even  !     The  goblin-men  were 
more   artistic   than   that ;   they  realised  the 


90  PROSE    FANCIES 

absurdity  of  paying  for  immortal  things  in 
coin  of  mere  mortality.  So  : — 

'  You  have  much  gold  upon  your  head,' 

They  answered  all  together  : 
'  Buy  from  us  with  a  golden  curl. ' 

Yes,  those  are  the  ideal  rates  at  which  poetry 
should  be  paid.  We  should,  of  course,  pay 
for  fairy  goods  in  fairy-gold. 

One  of  the  few  such  appropriate  trans- 
actions I  remember  was  Queen  Elizabeth's 
buying  a  poem  from  Sir  Philip  Sidney, 
literally,  with  a  lock  of  her  'gowden  hair.' 
Poem  and  lock  now  lie  together  at  Wilton, 
both  untouched  of  time.  Or  was  it  that  Sir 
Philip  Sidney  paid  for  the  lock  with  his 
poem?  However  it  was,  the  exchange  was 
appropriate.  The  ratio  between  the  thing 
sold  and  the  price  given  was  fairly  equal. 
And,  at  all  times,  it  is  far  less  absurd  for 
a  poet  to  pay  for  the  earthly  thing  with 
his  poem  (thus  leaving  us  to  keep  the 
change),  than  that  we  should  think  to  pay 
him  for  his  incorruptible  with  our  corruptible. 
There  would,  no  doubt,  be  a  subtle  element 
of  absurdity  in  a  poet  consenting  to  pay  his 


APOLLO'S    MARKET         91 

tailor  for  a  suit  with  a  sonnet,  while  it 
would  obviously  be  beyond  all  proportion 
monstrous  for  a  tailor  to  think  to  buy  a 
sonnet  with  a  suit.  Yet  a  poet  might, 
perhaps,  be  brought  to  consider  the  trans- 
action, if  he  chanced  to  be  of  a  gentle 
disposition. 

Yes,  the  true,  the  tasteful  way  to  pay 
a  poet  is  by  the  exchange  of  some  other 
beautiful  thing :  by  beautiful  praise,  by  a 
beautiful  smile,  by  a  well-shaped  tear,  by  a 
rose.  It  is  thus  that  a  poet — frequently,  I 
am  bound  to  confess  —  finds  his  highest 
reward. 

At  the  same  time,  there  is  a  subtle  ironic 
pleasure  in  taking  the  world's  money  for 
poetry — even  though  one  pays  it  over  to  a 
charity  immediately — for  one  feels  that  the 
world,  for  some  reason  or  another,  has  been 
persuaded  to  buy  something  which  it  didn't 
really  want,  and  which  it  will  throw  away  so 
soon  as  we  are  round  the  corner.  If  the  reader 
has  ever  published  a  volume  of  verse,  he 
must  often  have  chuckled  with  an  unnatural 
glee  over  the  number  of  absolutely  unpoetic 
good  souls  who,  from  various  motives — the 


92  PROSE    FANCIES 

unhappy  accident  of  relationship,  perhaps— 
have  'subscribed.'  Most  of  us  have  sound 
unpoetic  uncles.  Of  course,  you  make  them 
buy  you — in  large-paper  too.  Have  you  ever 
gloatingly  pictured  their  absolute  bewilder- 
ment as,  with  a  stern  sense  of  family  pride, 
they  sit  down  to  cut  your  pages  ?  Think  of 
the  poor  souls  thus  (  moving  about  in  worlds 
not  realised.' 

A  perfect  instance  of  this  cruelty  to  the 
Philistine  occurs  to  me.  The  poet  in  ques- 
tion is  one  whose  forte  is  children's  poetry. 
Very  tender  some  of  his  poems  are.  You 
will  find  them  now  and  again  in  St.  Nicholas, 
and  he  is  not  unknown  in  this  country. 
With  a  heart  like  a  lamb  for  children,  he 
is  like  a  hawk  upon  the  Philistine.  I  re- 
member an  occasion,  before  he  published 
a  volume,  when  we  were  together  in  a 
tavern,  in  a  country-town,  a  tavern  thronged 
with  farmers  on  market  days.  The  poet  had 
some  prospectuses  in  his  pocket.  Suddenly 
a  great  John  Bull  would  come  bumping  in 
like  a  cockchafer,  and  call  for  his  pint.  '  Just 
you  watch,'  the  poet  would  say,  and  away  he 
crossed  over  to  his  victim.  '  Good  morning, 


APOLLO'S    MARKET         93 

Mr.  Oats ! '  '  Why,  good  morning,  sir. 
How-d'ye-do ;  I  hardly  know'd  thee.'  Then 
presently  the  voice  of  the  charmer  unto  the 
farmer — 'Mr.  Oats,  you  care  for  children, 
don't  you?'  'Ay,  ay,'  would  answer  the 
farmer,  a  little  doubtfully,  'when  they're 
little'uns.'  '  Well  you  know  I'm  what  they, 
call  a  poet.'  To  this  Mr.  Oats  would 
respond  with  a  good  round  laugh,  as  of  a 
man  enjoying  a  good  thing.  This  was  very 
subtle  of  the  poet,  for  it  put  the  farmer  on 
good  terms  with  himself.  He  wondered,  as 
he  had  his  laugh  over  again,  how  a  man 
could  choose  to  be  a  poet,  when  he  might 
have  been  a  farmer.  'Well,  I'm  bringing 
out  a  book  of  poems  all  about  children — here 
is  one  of  them ! '  and  the  poet  would  read 
some  humorous  thing,  such  as  '  Breeching 
Tommy.'  Then  another  —  such  simple 
pictures  of  humanity  at  the  age  of  two,  that 
the  farmer  could  not  but  be  moved  to  that 
primary  artistic  delight,  the  recognition  of 
the  familiar.  Then  the  farmer  would  grow 
grave,  as  he  always  did  at  any  approach  to  a 
purchase,  however  small,  while  the  poet 
would  rapidly  speak  of  the  fitness  of  the 


94  PROSE    FANCIES 

volume  as  a  present  to  the  old  woman: 
'  Women  cared  for  such  things,'  he  would  add 
pityingly.  Then  the  farmer  would  cautiously 
ask  the  price,  and  blow  his  cheeks  out  in 
surprise  on  hearing  that  it  was  five  shillings. 
He  had  never  given  so  much  for  a  book 
in  his  life.  The  poet  would  then  insidiously 
suggest  that  by  subscribing  before  publi- 
cation he  would  save  a  discount.  This 
would  arouse  the  farmer's  instinct  for  getting 
things  cheap  ;  and  so,  finally,  with  a  little 
more  *  playing,'  Mr.  Timothy  Oats,  of  Clod 
Hall,  Salop,  was  landed  high  and  dry  on 
the  subscription  list — a  list,  by  the  way, 
which  already  included  all  the  poet's 
tradesmen  !  This  is  one  example  of  '  how 
poets  sell' 

Yet  over  and  above  what  we  may  term  these 
forced  sales,  the  demand  for  verse,  we  are 
assured,  is  growing.  The  impression  to  the 
contrary  on  the  part  of  the  Philistine  is  a 
delusion,  a  false  security.  And  the  demand, 
a  well-known  publisher  has  told  us,  is  an 
intelligent  one,  for  poetry  of  the  markedly 
idealistic,  or  markedly  realistic,  kind  :  but  to 
writers  of  the  merely  sentimental  he  can  offer 


APOLLO'S    MARKET        95 

no  hope.  Their  golden  age,  a  pretty  long 
one  while  it  lasted,  has  probably  gone  for 
ever. 

This  is  good  news  for  those  engaged  in 
growing  dreams  for  the  London  market 


THE 
'GENIUS'    SUPERSTITION 

IT  must  be  very  painful  to  the  sentimentalist 
to  notice  what  common  sense  is  beginning 
to  prevail  on  one  of  his  pet  subjects :  that 
of  the  ancient  immunities  of  'genius.'  Of 
course,  to  a  great  many  good  people  genius 
continues  stilt  to  be  accepted  as  payment 
in  full  for  every  species  of  obligation,  and  if 
a  man  were  a  great  poet  he  might  probably 
still  ruin  a  woman's  life,  and  some,  in  secret 
at  least  would  deem  that  he  did  God  service. 
There  are  perhaps  even  more  women  than 
ever  nowadays  who  would,  as  Keats  put  it, 
like  to  be  married  to  an  epic,  and  given 
away  by  a  three-volume  novel.  Such  an 
attitude,  however,  is  more  and  more  taking 
its  place  among  the  superstitions,  and  the 
divine  right  ot  genius  to  ride  rough-shod 
over  us  is  at  a  discount. 

96 


THE    'GENIUS'    SUPERSTITION     97 

At  the  same  time,  our  national  capacity 
for  reaching  right  conclusions  by  the  wrong 
course  is  in  this  matter  once  more  exempli- 
fied. In  the  main,  as  usual,  our  reasoning 
seems  to  have  been  quite  astray.  We  have 
argued  as  though  for  ourselves,  and  that  on 
those  lines  we  should  have  reached  the  same 
conclusion  is  somewhat  surprising.  Because, 
indeed,  it  does  pay  the  world  to  allow 
genius  to  do  its  pleasure :  its  victims  even 
have  little  to  complain  of;  they  wear  the 
martyr's  crown,  and  if  a  few  tradesmen  or  a 
few  women  are  the  worse,  it  has  been  deemed 
just,  time  out  of  mind,  that  such  should  suffer 
for  the  people.  But  the  one  whom  it  does 
not  pay,  either  in  this  world  or  the  next,  is 
emphatically  the  man  of  genius  himself.  It  is 
really  on  his  behalf  that  the  protest  against 
his  ancient  immunities  should  be  made,  for 

'  Whether  a  man  serve  God  or  his  own  whim 
Matters  not  much  in  the  end  to  anyone  but  him.' 

To    take    the    threadbare    instance,    the 

world  suffered  nothing  from  the  suicide  of 

Harriet  Westbrook  :  rather  it  gained  by  one 

more  story  of  tragic  pathos.     Harriet  her- 

G 


98  PROSE    FANCIES 

self  was  no  loser,  for  she  had  lived  her  dream, 
and  the  stern  joy  of  a  great  sorrow  was 
granted  her  to  die  with  :  it  was  only  the  sel- 
fish heart  that  could  leave  her  thus  to  suffer 
and  die  that  was  the  loser.  Not  in  its  rela- 
tions with  the  world,  fair  or  ill — such,  like  all 
external  things,  are  important  only  as  we 
take  them  :  but  in  its  diminished  capacity  to 
feel  greatly  and  tenderly,  in  its  added  numb- 
ness, in  its  less  noble  beat.  It  was  thus  that 
the  cor  cordium  lost  what  no  lyric  passion, 
no  triumphant  exultation  of  success,  could 
give  to  it  again. 

However,  Shelley  and  his  story  belong 
more  or  less  to  the  tragic  muse,  and  this  sub- 
ject is,  perhaps,  rather  more  the  property  of 
the  comic :  for  great  poets  are  rare,  and 
really  it  is  the  smaller  genius  we  have 
always  with  us  that  is  likely  to  suffer  most 
from  those  '  immunities ' ;  still  more  the 
talent  that  would  fain  bear  the  greater  name, 
and  most  of  all  the  misguided  industry 
which  is  neither  the  one  nor  the  other. 

In  this  lower  sphere,  it  is  not  murder  and 
sudden  death,  and  other  such  volcanic  aber- 
rations, that  call  for  condonation  ;  but  those 


THE    'GENIUS'    SUPERSTITION     99 

offences  against  that  code  of  daily  inter- 
course which  some  faulty  observer  of  human 
life  has  characterised  as  '  the  minor  morals.' 

The  type  of  'genius'  I  am  thinking  of 
probably  began  life  by  a  misapplication,  to 
himself,  of  Emerson's  essay  on  Self-Reliance: 
a  great  and  beautiful  essay,  but  Oh  !  how 
much  has  it  to  answer  for  in  the  survival  of 
the  unfittest.  Alas  !  that  the  wheat  and  tares 
must  grow  together  till  the  harvest.  It  is 
the  syrup  of  phosphorus  by  which  weakly 
mediocrity  develops  into  sturdiness,  a  sturdy 
coarseness  that  else  might  have  died  down 
and  been  spared  us.  But,  thanks  to  that  or 
some  other  artificial  fertiliser,  it  grows  up 
with  the  idea  that  the  duty  which  lies  near- 
est to  it  is  to  write  weary  books,  paint 
monotonous  pictures,  persevere  in  'd — d 
bad  acting ' ;  and  it  fulfils  that  duty  with  an 
energy  known  only  to  mediocrity.  The 
literary  variety,  probably,  has  the  characteris- 
tics of  the  type  most  fully  developed.  No 
one  takes  himself  with  more  touching  seri- 
ousness. Day  by  day  he  grows  in  conceit, 
neglects  his  temper,  especially  at  home,  with 
a  wife  who  is  worth  ten  of  him  and  all  his 


TOO          PROSE    FANCIES 

'works,'  and  generally  behaves,  as  the  phrase 
goes,  '  as  if  anything  becomes  him.'  If  you 
visit  him  en  famille,  you  will  find  him  especi- 
ally characteristic  at  meals,  during  which  he 
is  wont  to  sit  absorbed,  with  an  air  of  '  I 
cannot  shake  off  the  god ' ;  and  when  they 
are  over  he  goes  off,  moodily  chewing  a 
toothpick,  to  his  den,  where,  maybe,  the 
genius  finds  vent  in  a  dissertation  on  '  Peg- 
Tops/  for  The  Boy's  Own,  or  '  The  Noses  of 
Great  Men,'  for  Chambers'  Journal. 

But  if  such  genius  as  this  be  chiefly  comic, 
its  work  cannot  but  awaken  in  one  a  deep 
sense  of  the  pathetic.  To  stand  before  the 
poor  little  picture  that  has  been  so  much  to 
its  painter,  and  yet  holds  no  spark  of  vitality 
or  touch  of  distinction  ;  to  take  up  the 
poor  little  book  into  which  all  the  oil  of  so 
many  wasted  days  could  breathe  no  breath 
of  life,  formless,  uninspired,  unnecessary. 
Think  of  the  pathos  of  the  illusion  that  has 
waved  '  its  purple  wings '  around  these  lifeless 
products,  endowing  with  sensitive  expression 
the  wooden  lineaments  that  have  really  been 
dead  and  unexpressive  all  the  time,  never 
glowed  at  all  save  to  the  wistful  yearning  eye 


THE  'GENIUS'  SUPERSTITION      101 

of  their  befooled  creator.  Yet  if  nature  be 
thus  cruel  to  afflict,  she  is  no  less  kind  to  con- 
sole: for  the  victim  of  this  species  of  halluci- 
nation seldom  wakens  from  the  dream.  That 
essay  on  Self-Reliance  is  with  him  to  the  end. 
Yet  no  less  pathetic  is  it  to  reflect 
how  his  whole  development  has  suffered 
for  this  mistake,  all  his  life-blood  gone 
to  feed  this  abortive  thing.  The  gentler 
charities  of  life  have  been  neglected,  fine 
qualities  atrophied,  the  man  has  grown 
narrow  and  selfish,  all  the  real  things  have 
been  lost  for  this  shadow :  that  he  might 
become,  what  nature  never  meant  him  to  be 
— an  artist.  All  along,  when  he  has  made 
any  excuse,  it  has  been  'art.'  But,  more 
likely,  he  has  not  been  asked  for  excuse,  he 
has  lived  under  the  shelter  of  the  '  genius ' 
superstition.  He  has  worn  the  air  of  making 
great  sacrifices  for  the  goddess,  and  in  these 
his  intimates  have  felt  a  proud  sense  of 
awful  participation,  as  of  a  family  whom  the 
gods  love.  They  have  never  understood 
that  art  is  a  particular  form  of  self-indul- 
gence, by  no  means  confined  to  artists ; 
that  it  often  becomes  no  less  a  vice  than 


102  PROSE    FANCIES 

opium-eating,  and  that  the  same  question 
has  to  be  asked  of  both — whether  the  dreams 
are  worth  the  cost.  This  might  occasionally 
be  asked  of  the  world's  famous  :  not  only  of 
those  whose  art  has  been  the  evilly  exquisite 
outcome  of  spiritual  disease,  but  even  of  the 
great  sane  successful  reputations. 

There  is,  too,  especially  about  the  latter, 
perhaps,  a  touch  of  comic  suggestiveness  in 
the  sublime  preoccupation  to  which  we  owe 
their  great  legacies,  that  look  of  Atlas  which 
is  always  pathetic,  when  it  is  not  foolish,  on 
the  face  of  a  mortal :  the  grand  air  of  a 
Goethe,  the  colossal  absorption  of  a  Balzac. 
Their  attitude  offends  one's  sense  of  the 
relation  of  things,  and  we  feel  that,  after  all, 
we  could  have  spared  half  their  works  for  a 
larger  share  of  that  delicate  instinct  for  pro- 
portion, which  is  one  of  the  most  precious 
attributes  of  what  we  call  a  gentleman.  But 
the  demi-god  has  always  much  of  the 
nouveau  riche  about  him,  and  a  gentleman  is, 
after  all,  an  exquisite  product.  Indeed,  the 
world  has,  one  may  think,  quite  enough 
genius  to  go  on  with.  It  could  well  do 
with  a  few  more  gentlemen. 


A  BORROWED  SOVEREIGN 

(TO   MR.    AND   MRS.    WELCH) 

JlM  lent  me  a  sovereign.  He  was  working 
hard  to  make  his  home,  and  was  saving  every 
penny.  However,  I  took  it,  for  I  was  really 
in  sore  straits.  If  you  have  ever  known  what 
it  is  absolutely  to  need  a  sovereign,  when 
you  have  neither  banking  account  nor  em- 
ployment, and  your  evening  clothes  are  no 
longer  accessible  for  the  last,  you  will  be  in 
a  position  to  understand  the  transfiguring 
properties  of  one  small  piece  of  gold.  You 
leave  your  friend's  rooms  a  different  man. 
Like  the  virtuous  in  the  Buddhistic  round, 
you  go  in  a  beggar  and  come  out  a  prince. 
To  vary  Carlyle's  phrase,  you  can  pay  for 
dinners,  you  can  call  hansoms,  you  can  take 
stalls;  in  fact,  you  are  a  prince — to  the 
extent  of  a  sovereign. 

And  oh !   how  wooingly  does   the   world 

103 


104          PROSE    FANCIES 

seem  to  nestle  round  you — the  same  world 
that  was  so  cold  and  haughty  ten  minutes 
ago.  The  world  is  a  courtesan,  and  has 
heard  you  have  found  a  sovereign. 

The  gaslights  seem  beaming  love  at  you. 
So  near  and  bright  are  the  streets,  you  want 
to  stay  out  in  them  all  night ;  though  you 
didn't  relish  the  prospect  last  evening.  O 
sweet,  sweet,  siren  London,  with  your  golden 
voice — I  have  a  sovereign  ! 

This,  of  course,  was  but  the  first  rich  im- 
pulse. The  sovereign  should  really  be  kept 
for  the  lodgings.  But  the  snug  little  oyster- 
shops  about  Booksellers'  Row  are  so  tempt- 
ing, and  there  is  nothing  like  oysters  to  give 
one  courage  to  open  that  giant  oyster  spoken 
of  by  Ancient  Pistol. 

I  went  in.  I  assured  my  conscience  that 
it  should  only  be  '  Anglo-Portuguese,'  and 
that  I  would  forego  the  roll  and  butter. 
But  'Anglos'  are  not  nice,  Dutch  are  in 
every  way  to  be  preferred  ;  and  if  you  are 
paying  eighteenpence  you  might  as  well  pay 
three  shillings,  and  what 's  the  use  of  drawing 
the  line  at  a  roll  and  butter  ?  No  !  we  will 
repent  after  the  roll  and  butter.  '  Roll  and 


A   BORROWED    SOVEREIGN    105 

butter  '  shall  be  my  Ebenezer.  The  '  rV  have 
a  notorious  mnemonic  quality.  They  will 
help  me  to  remember. 

So  I  sat  down,  and,  fondling  my  sovereign 
in  my  pocket,  fell  into  a  dream.  When  the 
oysters  came  I  wished  they  had  been 
'Anglos'  after  all,  because  my  dream  had 
grown  beautiful  and  troublesome,  and  I  had 
really  forgotten  the  oysters  altogether. 
However,  I  ate  them  mechanically,  and 
ordering  another  half-dozen,  so  that  the 
manager  should  not  begrudge  me  my  seat, 
I  turned  again  to  my  dream. 

A  young  girl  sat  in  a  dainty  room,  writing 
at  a  quaint  old  escritoire,  lit  by  candles  in 
shining  brass  sconces.  She  had  a  sweet 
blonde  face,  but  more  character  in  it 
than  usually  falls  to  the  lot  of  the  English 
girl.  There  was  experience  in  the  sensitive 
refinement  of  her  features,  a  silver  touch  of 
suffering :  not  wasting  experience  or  bitter 
suffering,  but  just  enough  to  refine — she  had 
waited.  But  she  had  been  bravely  happy  all 
the  time. 

Pretty  books  filled  a  shelf  above  her 
escritoire,  and  between  the  candlesticks  was 


106          PROSE    FANCIES 

a  photograph  in  a  filigree  silver  frame.  To- 
wards this  she  looked  every  now  and  then, 
in  the  pauses  of  her  writing,  with  a  happy, 
trustful  expression  of  quiet  love.  During  one 
pause  she  noticed  that  her  little  clock  pointed 
to  8.30.  'Jim  will  just  be  going  on,'  she  said 
to  herself.  Yes,  that  photograph  was  '  Jim.' 

A  quaint  little  face  it  was,  full  of  sweet 
wrinkles,  and  yet  but  a  boy's  face.  The 
wrinkles,  you  could  see,  were  but  so  many 
threads  of  gold  which  happy  laughter  had 
left  there.  Siss  called  him  her  Punchinello, 
likewise  her  poet,  for  Jim  is  a  poet  who 
makes  his  poetry  of  his  own  bright  face 
and  body,  acts  it  night  after  night  to  an 
audience,  and  the  people  laugh  and  cry  as 
he  plays,  for  his  face  is  like  a  bubbling 
spring,  full  of  laughing  eddies  on  the  surface, 
but  ever  so  deep  with  sweet  freshness 
beneath — and  some  catch  sight  of  the  deeps. 
The  world  knows  him  as  a  comedian.  Siss 
knows  him  as  a  poet,  and  because  she  knows 
what  loving  tender  tears  are  in  him  as  well  as 
laughter,  she  calls  him  her  Punchinello. 

This  is  what  she  was  writing :  '  How  near 
our  home  seems  now,  Jimmie  boy !  Every 


A   BORROWED   SOVEREIGN    107 

night  as  you  go  on — and  you  are  just  going 
on  now — I  feel  our  home  draw  nearer :  and, 
do  you  know,  all  this  week  our  star  has 
seemed  to  grow  brighter  and  brighter.  Can 
you  see  it  in  London  ?  It  comes  out  here 
about  six  o'clock — first  very  pale,  like  a 
dream,  and  then  fuller  and  fuller  and  warmer 
and  warmer.  Sometimes  I  say  that  it  is  the 
sovereigns  we  are  putting  into  the  bank  that 
make  it  so  much  brighter ;  and  I  am  sure  it 
was  brighter  after  that  last  ten  pounds.  .  .  . 
You  are  laughing  at  me,  aren't  you  ?  Never 
mind  ;  you  can  be  just  as  silly.  Dear,  dear, 
funny  little  face  ! ' 

I  had  reached  just  so  far  in  my  dream 
when  the  oysters  came,  and  that  is  why  I 
wished  I  had  ordered  '  Anglos '  and  no  roll. 

When  I  looked  again,  Siss  had  stopped 
writing,  and  was  sitting  with  her  head  in  her 
hands  dreaming.  I  looked  into  her  eyes,  felt 
ashamed  for  a  moment,  and  then  stepped 
into  her  dream.  I  felt  I  was  not  worthy  to 
walk  there,  but  I  took  off  my  hat  and  told 
myself  that  I  was  reverent. 

It  was  a  pretty  flat,  full  of  dainty  rooms, 
and  I  followed  her  from  one  to  another,  and 


io8          PROSE    FANCIES 

one  there  was  just  like  that  in  which  I  had 
seen  her  writing,  with  the  old  escritoire,  and 
the  books,  and  the  burning  candles,  and  the 
silver  photograph  shrine.  She  walked  about 
very  wistfully,  and  her  eyes  were  full.  So 
were  mine,  and  I  wanted  to  sob,  but  feared 
lest  she  should  hear.  Presently  Jim  joined 
her,  and  they  walked  together,  and  said  to 
each  other,  '  Think,  this  is  our  home  at  last ' — 
'  Think,  this  is  our  home  at  last.  O  love,  our 
home — together  for  evermore  ! ' 

This  they  said  many  times,  and  at  length 
they  came  to  a  room  that  had  a  door  white 
as  ivory,  and  I  caught  a  breath  of  freshest 
flowers  as  they  opened  and  passed  in. 

Then  I  closed  my  eyes,  and  when  I  looked 
again  I  thought  an  angel  stood  on  the 
threshold,  as  I  had  seen  it  somewhere  in 
Victor  Hugo — a  happy  angel  with  finger 
upon  his  lip. 

And  when  the  dream  had  gone,  and  I  was 
once  more  alone,  I  said  'Jim  is  working,  Siss 
is  waiting,  and  I — am  eating  borrowed 
oysters.' 

Then  I  took  out  the  sovereign  and  looked 
at  it,  for  it  was  now  symbolic.  Outside,  above 


A   BORROWED   SOVEREIGN    109 

the  street,  a  star  was  shining.  I  had  filched 
a  beam  of  Siss's  star.  Was  it  less  bright  to- 
night? Had  she  missed  this  sovereign? 

It  had  been  symbolic  before — a  sovereign's- 
worth  of  the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil ; 
now  it  was  a  sovereign's-worth  of  holy  love 
and  home.  Every  penny  I  spent  of  it 
dimmed  that  star,  delayed  that  home.  In 
my  pocket  it  meant  a  sovereign's-worth  more 
working  and  waiting.  Pay  it  back  again 
into  that  star,  and  it  was  a  sovereign  nearer 
home.  Yes,  it  was  a  sovereign's-worth  of 
that  flat,  of  that  escritoire,  those  books,  those 
burning  candles,  that  photograph,  that  ivory- 
white  door,  those  sweet-smelling  flowers,  a 
sovereign's-worth  of  that  angel,  I  was  keep- 
ing in  my  pocket. 

Out  on  it !  God  forgive  me.  I  had  not 
thought  it  meant  that  to  borrow  a  sovereign 
from  Jim,  meant  that  to  eat  those  borrowed 
oysters.  Nevertheless,  they  had  not  been 
all  an  immoral  indulgence.  Even  oysters 
may  be  the  instruments  of  virtue  in  the 
hands  of  Providence. 

The  shopman  knew  me,  so  I  '  confounded 
it '  and  told  him  I  had  come  out  without  my 


no          PROSE    FANCIES 

purse.  It  was  all  right.  Pay  next  time. 
Jim's  theatre  was  close  by,  it  was  but  a 
stone's-throw  to  the  stage-door.  Easy  to 
leave  him  a  note.  What  will  he  think,  I 
wonder,  as  he  reads  it,  and  the  sovereign 
rolls  out:  'Dear  old  man,  forgive  me — I 
forgot  it  was  a  sovereign's-worth  of  home.' 

Yet,  after  all,  it  was  the  oysters  that  did 
this  thing. 


ANARCHY  IN  A  LIBRARY 

(A  FABLE   FOR  SOCIALISTS) 

HAVING  occasion  recently  to  re-arrange  my 
books,  they  lay  in  bewildering  jumbled  heaps 
upon  my  study  floor  ;  and,  having  in  vain 
puzzled  over  this  plan  and  that  which  should 
give  the  little  collection  a  continuity  such  as 
it  had  never  attained  before,  I  at  length  gave 
it  up  in  despair,  and  sat,  with  my  head  in  my 
hands,  hopeless.  Presently  I  seemed  to  hear 
small  voices  talking  in  whispers,  a  curious 
papery  tone,  like  the  fluttering  of  leaves,  and 
listening  I  heard  distinctly  these  words  : — 
'  The  great  era  of  universal  equality  and 
redistribution  has  dawned  at  last.  No  one 
book  shall  any  longer  claim  more  shelf  than 
another,  no  book  shall  be  taller  or  thicker 
than  another.  The  age  of  folios  and  quartos 
is  past,  and  the  Age  of  the  Universal  Octavo 

has  dawned.' 

111 


ii2          PROSE    FANCIES 

Looking  up,  I  saw  that  the  voice  was  that 
of  a  shabby,  but  perky,  octavo,  which  I  had 
forgotten  I  ever  possessed,  since  the  day  when 
some  mistaken  charity  had  prompted  me  to 
rescue  it  from  the  threepenny  box  and  give 
it  a  good  home  in  a  respectable  family  of 
books.  Certainly,  it  had  so  far  rilled  the 
humble  position  of  a  shelf-liner,  and  its 
accidental  elevation  into  daylight  on  the 
top  of  a  prostrate  folio  had  evidently  turned 
its  head.  It  was  now  doing  its  best  to 
disseminate  socialistic  principles  among  the 
set  of  scurvy  octavos  and  duodecimos  in  its 
neighbourhood. 

'  Why  should  we  choke  with  dust  in  the 
dark  there/  it  continued,  '  that  these  splendid 
creatures  should  glitter  all  day  in  the  sun- 
shine, and  get  all  the  firelight  of  an  evening  ? 
We  were  born  to  be  read  as  much  as  they, 
born  to  enjoy  our  share  of  the  good  things  of 
this  world  as  much  as  my  Lord  Folio,  as 
much  as  any  Honourable  Quarto,  or  fashion- 
able Large  Paper.  My  Brothers,  the  hour 
has  come  :  will  you  strike  now  or  never,  exact 
your  rights  as  free-born  books,  or  will  you  go 
back  to  be  shelf-liners  as  before  ?  ' 


ANARCHY  IN  A  LIBRARY    113 

[Loud  cries  of  '  No !  no  !  we  won't,'  here 
encouraged  the  speaker.] 

'  Strike  now,  and  the  book  unborn  shall 
bless  you.  Miss  this  golden  opportunity,  and 
the  cause  we  serve  will  be  delayed  another 
hundred  editions.' 

At  this  point  a  great  folio  that  had  for 
some  time  been  leaning  threateningly,  like 
a  slab  at  Stonehenge,  above  the  speaker, 
suddenly  fell  and  silenced  him  ;  but  he  had 
not  spoken  in  vain,  and  from  various  sets  of 
books  about  the  room  I  heard  the  voices  of 
excited  agitators  taking  up  his  words.  Then 
an  idea  struck  me.  I  was,  as  I  told  you, 
heartily  sick  of  my  task  of  arrangement. 
Here  seemed  an  opportunity. 

'  Look  here,'  I  said,  '  you  shall  have  it  all 
to  yourselves.  I  resign,  I  abdicate.  You 
shall  arrange  yourselves  as  you  please,  but 
be  quick  about  it,  and  let  there  be  as  little 
bloodshed  as  possible.' 

With  that  there  arose  such  a  hubbub  as 
was  never  before  heard  in  a  quiet  book-room, 
not  even  during  that  famous  battle  of  the  St. 
James's  Library  in  1697  ;  and  conspicuous 
among  the  noises  was  a  strange  crowing 
H 


114          PROSE    FANCIES 

sound  as  of  young  cocks,  which  I  was  at  a 
loss  to  understand,  till  I  bethought  me  how 
Mentzelius,  long  ago,  sitting  in  the  quiet  of 
his  library,  had  -heard  the  bookworm  'crow 
like  a  cock  unto  his  mate.'  On  looking  I  saw 
that  the  insurgents  had  indeed  pressed  into 
their  service  a  certain  politic  body  of  book- 
worms as  joyous  heralds,  whom  I  had  never 
suspected  of  inhabiting  my  books  at  all — 
though,  indeed,  such  hidden  creatures  do  crawl 
out  of  their  corners  in  times  of  upheaval. 

It  was  long  before  I  could  disentangle  indi- 
vidual voices  from  the  wild  chaos  of  strident 
theories  that  surrounded  me.  But  at  last 
there  was  silence,as  one  bilious-looking  vellum 
book,  old  enough  to  have  known  better,  had 
evidently  caught  the  ear  of  the  assembled 
multitudes ;  and  then  I  understood  that 
the  movement  had  already  found  its  Robes- 
pierre. It  was  clear  from  his  words  that  the 
universal  gospel  of  equality,  so  beautifully 
expatiated  upon  before  the  revolution,  had 
had  reference  only  to  those  who  were  already 
on  an  equality  of  that  low  estate  which  fears 
no  fall.  The  only  equality  now  offered  to 
books  above  the  rank  of  octavo  was  that  of 


ANARCHY  IN  A  LIBRARY    115 

death,  which,  philosophers  have  long  assured 
us,  makes  all  men  equal,  by  a  short  and 
simple  method.  There  was  but  one  other 
way — that  the  quartos  should  consent  to  be 
cut  in  two,  and  the  folios  quartered  ;  but  that, 
alas  !  meant  death  no  less,  for  that  which 
alone  is  of  worth  in  both  books  and  men,  the 
soul,  would  be  no  more.  So,  as  it  seemed 
they  must  die  either  way,  all  the  condemned 
chose  death  before  dishonour.  Several  dis- 
tinguished folios  who,  in  a  quixotism  of 
heart,  had  flirted  with  the  socialistic  leaders 
when  their  schemes  were  but  propaganda, 
and  equality  had  not  yet  been  so  rigor- 
ously defined,  now  bitterly  repented  their 
folly,  and  did  their  best  in  heading  a  rally 
against  their  foes.  That,  however,  was 
soon  quelled,  and  but  hastened  their 
doom. 

'  To  the  guillotine  with  them  ! '  cried  the 
bilious  little  octavo,  and  then  I  saw  that  my 
tobacco-cutter  had  been  extemporised  into 
the  deadly  engine. 

But,  hereupon,  a  voice  of  humour  found 
hearing,  that  of  a  stout  321110,  evidently  a 
philosopher. 


ii6          PROSE    FANCIES 

'  Why  shed  blood  ? '  he  said,  '  I  have  a 
better  plan.  Stature  is  no  mark  of  superi- 
ority, but  usually  the  reverse.  The  mind  's 
the  standard  of  the  man.  In  the  world  of 
men  the  tallest  and  handsomest  are  made 
into  servants,  and  called  flunkies,  and  these 
wait  upon  the  small  men,  who  have  all  the 
money,  which  among  men  corresponds  to 
brains  among  books.  Why  shouldn't  we 
take  a  hint  from  this  custom,  and  turn 
these  tall  gaudy  gentlemen  into  our  ser- 
vants, for  which  all  their  gilt  and  fine 
clothes  have  already  provided  them  with 
livery  ?  Ho  !  Sirrah  Folio,  come  and  turn 
my  page ! ' 

But  this  Lord  Folio  haughtily  refused  to 
do,  and,  consequently,  being  too  stout  to  turn 
his  own  pages,  the  little  32mo  could  say  no 
more.  His  proposal,  though  it  tickled  a  few, 
found  no  great  favour.  It  was  generally 
agreed  that  humour  had  no  place  in  the 
discussion  of  a  serious  question.  Another 
speaker  advocated  the  retention  of  the  con- 
demned as  ornaments  of  the  state,  but  he 
was  very  speedily  overruled.  Was  not  that 
the  shallow  excuse  by  which  they  had  hung 


ANARCHY  IN   A  LIBRARY    it; 

on  for  ever  so  long  ?      No,  that  was   quite 
worn  out. 

The  main  question  was  further  obstructed 
by  many  outbursts  of  individualism.  Certain 
self-contained  books  wished  to  be  left  to 
themselves,  and  have  no  part  in  the  social 
scheme,  unless  in  the  event  of  a  return  to 
monarchy,  when,  they  intimated,  they  might 
be  eligible  for  election.  This,  one  could  see, 
was  the  secret  hope  of  all  the  speakers  ;  and 
you  would  have  laughed  could  you  have 
heard  what  inflated  opinions  some  of  them 
had  of  their  own  importance — especially  two 
or  three  of  the  minor  poets.  Then,  again, 
many  sentimental  demands,  quite  unforeseen, 
added  to  the  general  anarchy.  Collected 
editions,  which  had  long  groaned  in  the  bond- 
age of  an  arbitrary  relationship,  saw  an  oppor- 
tunity in  the  general  overturn  to  break  away 
from  their  sets  and  join  their  natural  fellows. 
Sex  was  naturally  the  most  unruly  element 
of  all.  Volumes  that  had  waited  edition  after 
edition  for  each  other,  yearning  across  the 
shelves,  felt  their  time  had  come  at  last,  and 
leapt  into  each  other's  arms.  It  was  with  no 
avail  that  a  distress  minute  was  passed  by  The 


ii8  PROSE    FANCIES 

Hundred  Thousand  Committee  (a  somewhat 
unworkable  body)  that  henceforth  sex  was 
to  be  a  function  exercised  absolutely  for  the 
good  of  the  state  :  tattered  poets  were  to  be 
seen  wildly  proclaiming  a  different  doctrine. 

Such  eccentric  attachments  as  a  volume  of 
The  Essays  of  Elia  for  Margaret,  Duchess 
of  Newcastle,  were  especially  troublesome ; 
while  the  explosion  caused  by  the  accidental 
contact  of  that  same  unruly  Elia  with  a 
modern  reprint  of  The  Anatomy  of  Melan- 
choly, which  (he  said)  he  never  could  tolerate, 
proved  the  last  straw  to  the  Committee  of 
the  Hundred  Thousand,  who  immediately 
resigned  their  offices  in  anger  and  despair. 
Thereupon,  tenfold  chaos  once  more  return- 
ing, I  thought  it  time  to  interfere.  The  Doc- 
trine of  Equality  was  evidently  a  failure — 
among  books,  at  any  rate.  So  I  savagely 
fell  to,  and  threw  the  books  back  again  into 
their  immemorial  places,  and  the  cause  of 
freedom  in  '  The  City  of  Books '  sleeps  for 
another  hundred  editions. 

Only  I  placed  Elia  next  to  the  Duchess, 
because  he  was  a  human  fellow  and  had  no 
theories. 


WHY  do  the  heathen  so  furiously  rage 
against  limited  issues,  large  -  papers,  first 
editions,  and  the  rest  ?  For  there  is  certainly 
more  to  be  said  for  than  against  them. 
Broadly  speaking,  all  such  '  fads  '  are  worthy 
of  being  encouraged,  because  they  maintain, 
in  some  measure,  the  expiring  dignity  of 
letters,  the  mystery  of  books.  Day  by  day 
the  wonderfulness  of  life  is  becoming  lost  to 
us.  The  sanctities  of  religion  are  defiled,  the 
'  fairy  tales '  of  science  have  become  common- 
places. Christian  mysteries  are  debased  in 
the  streets  to  the  sound  of  drum  and  trumpet, 
and  the  sensitive  ear  of  the  telephone  is  but 
a  servile  drudge  'twixt  speculative  bacon 
merchants.  And  Books  ! — those  miraculous 
memories  of  high  thoughts  and  golden 
moods ;  those  magical  shells  tremulous  with 

119 


120          PROSE    FANCIES 

the  secrets  of  the  ocean  of  life  ;  those  love- 
letters  that  pass  from  hand  to  hand  of  a 
thousand  lovers  that  never  meet ;  those 
honeycombs  of  dreams ;  those  orchards  of 
knowledge  ;  those  still-beating  hearts  of  the 
noble  dead ;  those  mysterious  signals  that 
beckon  along  the  darksome  pathways  of  the 
past ;  voices  through  which  the  myriad 
lispings  of  the  earth  find  perfect  speech ; 
oracles  through  which  its  mysteries  call  like 
voices  in  moonlit  woods ;  -prisms  of  beauty ; 
urns  stored  with  all  the  sweets  of  all  the 
summers  of  time  ;  immortal  nightingales  that 
sing  for  ever  to  the  rose  of  life  :  Books,  Bibles 
— ah  me  !  what  have  ye  become  to-day  ! 

What,  indeed,  has  become  of  that  mystery 
of  the  Printed  Word,  of  which  Carlyle  so 
movingly  wrote?  It  has  gone,  it  is  to  be 
feared,  with  those  Memnonian  mornings  we 
sleep  through  with  so  determined  snore,  those 
ancient  mysteries  of  night  we  forget  beneath 
the  mimic  firmament  of  the  music-hall. 

Only  in  the  lamplit  closet  of  the  bookman, 
the  fanatic  of  first  and  fine  editions,  is  it 
remembered  and  revered.  To  him  alone  of 
an  Americanised,  '  pirated-edition '  reading 


'LIMITED    EDITIONS'     121 

world,  the  book  remains  the  sacred  thing  it 
is.  Therefore,  he  would  not  have  it  degraded 
by,  so  to  say,  an  indiscriminate  breeding, 
such  as  has  also  made  the  children  of  men 
cheap  and  vulgar  to  each  other.  We  pity 
the  desert  rose  that  is  born  to  unappreciated 
beauty,  the  unset  gem  that  glitters  on  no 
woman's  hand  ;  but  what  of  the  book  that 
eats  its  heart  out  in  the  threepenny  box,  the 
remainders  that  are  sold  ignominiously  in 
job  lots  by  ignorant  auctioneers  ?  Have  we 
no  feeling  for  them  ? 

Over-production,  in  both  men  and  shirts,  is 
the  evil  of  the  day.  The  world  has  neither 
enough  food,  nor  enough  love,  for  the  young 
that  are  born  into  it.  We  have  more  mouths 
than  we  can  fill,  and  more  books  than  we  can 
buy.  Well,  the  publisher  and  collector  of 
limited  editions  aim,  in  their  small  corner,  to 
set  a  limit  to  this  careless  procreation.  They 
are  literary  Malthusians.  The  ideal  world 
would  be  that  in  which  there  should  be  at 
least  one  lover  for  each  woman.  In  the 
higher  life  of  books  the  ideal  is  similar.  No 
book  should  be  brought  into  the  world, 
which  is  not  sure  of  love  and  lodging  on  some 


122          PROSE    FANCIES 

comfortable  shelf.  If  writers  and  publishers 
only  gave  a  thought  to  what  they  are  doing, 
when  they  generate  such  large  families  of 
books,  careless  as  the  salmon  with  its  million 
young,  we  should  have  no  such  sad  alms- 
houses  of  learning  as  Booksellers'  Row,  no 
such  melancholy  distress-sales  of  noble 
authors  as  remainder  auctions.  A  good  book 
is  beyond  price  ;  and  it  is  far  easier  to  under 
than  over  sell  it.  The  words  of  the  modern 
minor  poet  are  as  rubies,  and  what  if  his  sets 
bring  a  hundred  guineas? — it  is  more  as  it 
should  be,  than  that  any  sacrilegious  hand 
should  fumble  them  for  threepence.  It 
recalls  that  golden  age  of  which  Mr.  Dobson 
has  sung,  when — 

'  .  .  .  a  book  was  still  a  Book, 
Where  a  wistful  man  might  look, 
Finding  something  through  the  whole 
Beating — like  a  human  soul ' ; 

days  when  for  one  small  gilded  manuscript 
men  would  willingly  exchange  broad  manors, 
with  pasture  lands,  chases,  and  blowing 
woodlands ;  days  when  kings  would  send 
anxious  embassies  across  the  sea,  burdened 


'LIMITED    EDITIONS'     123 

with  rich  gifts  to  abbot  and  prior,  if  haply 
gold  might  purchase  a  single  poet's  book. 

But,  says  the  scoffer,  these  limited  editions 
and  so  forth  foster  the  vile  passions  of 
competition.  Well,  and  if  they  do?  Is  it 
not  meet  that  men  should  strive  together  for 
such  possessions?  We  compete  for  the 
allotments  of  shares  in  American-meat  com- 
panies, we  outbid  each  other  for  tickets  '  to 
view  the  Royal  procession,'  we  buffet  at  the 
gate  of  the  football  field,  and  enter  into  many 
another  of  the  ignoble  rivalries  of  peace  ;  and 
are  not  books  worth  a  scrimmage? — books 
that  are  all  those  wonderful  things  so  poeti- 
cally set  forth  in  a  preceding  paragraph ! 
Lightly  earned,  lightly  spurned,  is  the  sense, 
if  not  the  exact  phrasing,  of  an  old  proverb. 
There  is  no  telling  how  we  should  value 
many  of  our  possessions  if  they  were  more 
arduously  come  by :  our  relatives,  our 
husbands  and  wives,  our  presentation  poetry 
from  the  unpoetical,  our  invitation-cards  to 
one-man  shows  in  Bond  Street,  the  auto- 
photographs  of  great  actors,  the  flatteries  of 
the  unimportant,  the  attentions  of  the  em- 
barrassing :  how  might  we  not  value  all  such 


124          PROSE    FANCIES 

treasures,  if  they  were,  so  to  say,  restricted  to 
a  limited  issue,  and  guaranteed  'not  to  be 
reprinted' — 'plates  destroyed  and  type  dis- 
tributed.' 

Indeed,  all  nature  is  on  the  side  of  limited 
editions.  Make  a  thing  cheap,  she  cries  from 
every  spring  hedgerow,  and  no  one  values 
it.  When  do  we  find  the  hawthorn,  with 
its  breath  sweet  as  a  milch-cow's ;  or  the 
wild  rose,  with  its  exquisite  attar  and  its 
petals  of  hollowed  pearl — when  do  we  find 
these  decking  the  tables  of  the  great  ?  or  the 
purple  bilberry,  or  the  boot-bright  blackberry 
in  the  entremets  thereof?  Think  what  that 
'  common  dog-rose '  would  bring  in  a  limited 
edition !  And  new  milk  from  the  cow,  or 
water  from  the  well !  Where  would  cham- 
pagne be  if  those  intoxicants  were  restricted 
by  expensive  licence,  and  sold  in  gilded 
bottles?  What  would  you  not  pay  for  a 
ticket  to  see  the  moon  rise,  if  nature  had  not 
improvidently  made  it  a  free  entertainment ; 
and  who  could  afford  to  buy  a  seat  at  Covent 
Garden  if  Sir  Augustus  Harris  should 
suddenly  become  sole  impresario  of  the 
nightingale  ? 


'LIMITED    EDITIONS'     125 

Yes,  'from  scarped  cliff  and  quarried 
stone,'  Nature  cries,  '  Limit  the  Edition ! 
Distribute  the  type  ! ' — though  in  her  capa- 
city as  the  great  publisher,  she  has  been  all 
too  prodigal  of  her  issues,  and  ruinously 
guilty  of  innumerable  remainders.  In  fact,  it 
is  by  her  warning  rather  than  by  her  example 
that  we  must  be  guided  in  this  matter.  Let  . 
us  not  vulgarise  our  books,  as  she  has  done 
her  stars  and  flowers.  Let  us,  if  need  be, 
make  our  editions  smaller  and  smaller,  our 
prices  increasingly  '  prohibitive,'  rather  than 
that  we  should  forget  the  wonder  and  beauty 
of  printed  dream  and  thought,  and  treat  our 
books  as  somewhat  less  valuable  than  way- 
side weeds. 


A     PLEA    FOR    THE     OLD 
PLAYGOER 

HE  's  a  nuisance,  of  course.  But  to  see  only 
that  side  of  him  is  to  think,  as  the  shepherd 
boy  piped,  '  as  though '  you  will  '  never  grow 
old.'  Does  he  never  appeal  to  you  with  any 
more  human  significance,  a  significance  tear- 
ful and  uncomfortably  symbolic?  Or  are 
you  so  entirely  that  tailor's  fraction  of  man- 
hood, the  fin  de  siecle  type,  that  your  ninth 
part  does  not  include  a  heart  and  the 
lachrymal  gland  ? 

You  suspect  him  at  once  as  you  squeeze 
past  his  legs  to  your  stall,  for  he  cannot  quite 
conceal  the  hissing  twinge  of  gout ;  and  you 
are  hardly  seated  ere  you  are  quite  sure  that 
a  long  night  of  living  for  others  is  before  you. 

'You  hardly  would  think  it,  perhaps,'  he 
begins, '  but  I  saw  Charles  Young  play  the 
part — yes,  in  1824.' 


THE    OLD    PLAYGOER      127 

If  you  are  young  and  innocent,  you  think 
— '  What  an  interesting  old  gentleman  ! '  and 
you  have  vague  ideas  of  pumping  him  for 
reminiscences  to  turn  into  copy.  Poor 
boy,  you  soon  find  that  there  is  no  need 
of  pumping  on  your  part.  He  is  entirely 
self-acting,  and  the  wells  of  his  autobio- 
graphy are  as  deep  as  the  foundations  of 
the  world. 

If  you  are  more  experienced,  you  make  a 
quick  frantic  effort  to  escape  ;  you  try  to  nip 
the  bud  of  his  talk  with  a  frosty  '  indeed  ! ' 
and  edge  away,  calling  upon  your  programme 
to  cover  you.  You  never  so  much  as  turn 
the  sixteenth  part  of  an  eye  in  his  direction, 
for  even  as  the  oyster-man,  should  the  poor 
mollusc  heave  the  faintest  sigh,  is  inside  with 
his  knife  in  the  twinkling  of  a  star ;  even  as 
a  beetle  has  but  to  think  of  moving  its  tiniest 
leg  for  the  bird  to  swoop  upon  him, — even  so 
will  the  least  muscular  interest  in  your  neigh- 
bour give  you  bound  hand  and  foot  into  his 
power. 

But  really  and  truly  escape  is  hopeless. 
You  are  beyond  the  reach  of  any  salvage 
agency  whatsoever.  Better  make  up  your 


128          PROSE    FANCIES 

mind  to  be  absolutely  rude  or  absolutely 
kind  :  and  the  man  who  can  find  in  his  heart 
to  be  the  former  must  have  meeting  eye- 
brows, and  will  sooner  or  later  be  found 
canonised  in  wax  at  Madame  Tussaud's.  To 
be  the  latter,  however,  is  by  no  means  easy. 
It  is  one  of  the  most  poignant  forms  of  self- 
sacrifice  attained  by  the  race.  In  that,  at 
least,  you  have  some  wintry  consolation  ;  and 
the  imaginative  vignette  of  yourself  wearing 
the  martyr's  crown  is  a  pretty  piece  of  sacred 
art. 

If  you  wished  to  make  a  bag  of  old  play- 
goers, or  meditated  a  sort  of  Bartholomew's 
Eve,  a  revival  of  Hamlet  would,  of  course, 
be  the  occasion  you  would  select  for  your 
purpose :  for  the  old  playgoer,  so  to  speak, 
collects  Hamlets.  At  a  first  night  of  Hamlet 
every  sixth  stall-holder  is  a  Dr.  Doran  up  to 
date,  his  mind  a  portfolio  of  old  prints. 

That  is  why  a  perambulation  of  the  stalls 
is  as  perilous  as  to  pick  one's  way  through 
hot  ploughshares.  You  can  hardly  hope 
always  to  pass  through'  unscathed.  You 
are  as  sure  some  night  to  find  yourself 
seated  beside  him,  as  you  will  some 


THE    OLD    PLAYGOER     129 

day  be  called  to  serve  on  the  jury.  And 
then — 

'  O  limed  soul,  that,  struggling  to  be  free, 
Art  more  engaged  ! ' 

However,  'sudden  the  worst  turns  best  to 
the  brave,'  and  '  there  is  much  music '  in  this 
old  fellow  if  only  you  have  the  humanity  to 
listen. 

To  begin  with,  he  has  probably  a  dis- 
tinguished face,  with  a  bunch  of  vigorous 
curly  hair,  white  as  hawthorn.  He  has  a 
manner,  too.  Suppose  you  try  and  enter 
into  his  soul  for  a  moment.  It  does  us  good 
to  get  outside  ourselves  for  a  while,  and 
this  old  man's  soul  is  a  palace  of  memory. 
Those  lines  that,  maybe,  have  been  familiar 
to  you  for  sixteen  years,  have  been  familiar  to 
him  for  sixty.  That  is  why  he  knows  them 
off  so  well,  why  he  repeats  them  under  his 
breath — Look  at  his  face  ! — like  a  Methodist 
praying,  anticipating  the  actor  in  all  the  fine 
speeches.  Do  look  at  his  face !  How  it 
shines,  as  the  golden  passages  come  treading 
along.  How  his  head  moves  in  an  ecstasy 
of  remembrance,  in  which  there  is  a  whole 
world  of  tears.  How  he  half  turns  to  you 


130          PROSE    FANCIES 

with  a  wistful  appeal  to  feel  what  he  is 
feeling :  an  appeal  that  might  kindle  a  clod. 
It  is  the  old  wine  laughing  to  itself  within 
the  old  bottle. 

And,  one  thing  you  will  notice,  it  is  the 
poetry  that  moves  him  :  the  great  metaphor, 
the  sonorous  cadence,  the  honeysuckle 
fancy.  He  belongs  to  an  age  that  had  an 
instinct  for  beauty,  and  loved  style — an  age 
that,  in  the  words  of  a  modern  wit,  had  not 
grown  all  nose  with  intellect,  an  age  that 
went  to  the  theatre  to  dream,  not  to  dissect. 

For  you  there  may  be  here  and  there 
a  flower  of  remembrance  stuck  within  the 
leaves  of  the  play,  but  for  him  it  is  stained 
through  with  the  sweets  of  sixty  springs. 
His  youth  lies  buried  within  it  like  a 
thousand  violets. 

Practically  he  is  Death  at  the  play.  To 
you  there  is  but  one  ghost  in  Hamlet,  to  him 
there  are  fifty,  and  they  all  dance  like 
shadows  behind  '  the  new  Hamlet,'  and  even 
sit  about  the  stalls. 

If  your  love  be  with  you,  forbear  to  press 
her  hand  in  the  love-scenes,  or,  at  least,  don't 
let  the  old  man  see  you  :  because  he  used  to 


THE    OLD    PLAYGOER      131 

punctuate  those  very  passages  he  is  mutter- 
ing, in  just  the  same  way — sixty  years  ago, 
when  she  whose  angel  face  he  will  kiss  no 
more,  unless  it  be  in  the  heavenly  fields,  sat 
like  a  flower  at  his  side.  Poor  old  fellow, 
can  you  be  selfish  to  him  ?  Can  you  say, 
'  These  tedious  old  fools  ! '  Fool  thyself,  this 
night  shall  thy  youth  be  required  of  thee. 

You  might  think  of  this  next  time  you 
drop  across  the  old  playgoer.  It  was  natural 
in  Hamlet  to  swear  at  Polonius — who,  you 
will  remember,  was  an  old  playgoer  himself 
— but,  being  a  gentleman,  it  was  natural  in 
him,  too,  to  recall  the  first  player  with, 
'  Follow  that  lord ;  but  look  you  mock  him 
not!' 


THE  MEASURE  OF  A  MAN 

I  SOMETIMES  grow  melancholy  with  the 
thought  that,  though  I  wear  trousers  and 
shave  once  a  day,  I  am  not,  properly  speak- 
ing, a  Man.  Surely  it  is  from  no  failure  of 
goodwill,  no  lack  of  prayerful  striving  towards 
that  noble  estate :  for  if  there  is  one  spec- 
tacle in  this  moving  phantasmagoria  of  life 
that  I  love  to  carry  within  my  eye,  it  is  the 
figure  of  a  true  man.  The  mere  idea  of  a 
true  man  stirs  one's  heart  like  a  trumpet 
Therefore,  this  doubt  I  am  confiding  is  all 
the  more  dreary.  Naturally,  I  feel  it  most 
keenly  in  the  company  of  my  fellows,  each 
one  of  whom  seems  to  carry  the  victorious 
badge  of  manhood,  as  though  to  cry  shame 
upon  me.  They  make  me  shrink  into  my- 
self, make  me  feel  that  I  am  but  an  impostor 
in  their  midst.  Indeed,  in  that  sensitiveness 
of  mine  you  have  the  starting-point  of  my 

132 


THE   MEASURE   OF   A   MAN     133 

unmanliness.  Look  at  that  noble  fellow 
there.  He  is  six-foot  odd  in  his  stockings, 
straight,  stalwart,  and  confident.  His  face  is 
broad  and  strong,  his  close-cropped  head  is 
firm  and  proud  on  his  shoulders — firm  and 
proud  as  a  young  bull's.  It  is  a  head  made, 
indeed,  rather  to  butt  than  to  think  with  ;  it 
is  visited  with  no  effeminacy  of  thought  or 
dream.  It  has  another  striking  quality : 
it  is  hardly  distinguishable  from  any  other 
head  in  the  room — for  I  am  in  an  assemblage 
of  true  men  all,  a  glorious  herd  of  young 
John  Bulls.  All  have  the  same  strong 
jaws,  the  same  powerful  low  foreheads. 
Noble  fellows  !  Any  one  of  them  could  send 
me  to  eternity  with  the  wind  of  his  fist. 

And,  most  of  all,  is  their  manhood  brought 
home  to  me,  with  a  sickening  sense  of  inferi- 
ority, in  their  voices.  What  a  leonine 
authority  in  the  roar  of  their  opinions  ! 
Their  words  strike  the  air  firm  as  the  tread 
of  lions.  They  are  not  teased  with  fine 
distinctions,  possibilities  of  misconception, 
or  the  perils  of  afterthought.  Their  talk  is 
of  the  absolute,  their  opinions  wear  the 
primary  colours,  and  dream  not  of  '  art 


134  PROSE  FANCIES 
shades.'  Never  have  they  been  wrong  in 
their  lives,  never  shall  they  be  wrong  in  the 
time  to  come.  Never  have  they  been  known 
to  conjecture  that  another  may,  after  all,  be 
wiser  than  they,  handsomer,  stronger,  or 
more  fortunate.  They  would  kill  a  man 
rather  than  admit  a  mistake.  Noble  fellows  ! 
And  I  ?  Do  you  wonder  that  I  blush  in  my 
corner  as  I  gaze  upon  them,  strive  to  smooth 
my  hair  into  the  appearance  of  a  manly 
flatness,  strive  to  set  my  face  hard  and  feign 
it  knowing,  strive  to  elevate  my  voice  to  the 
dogmatic  note,  strive  to  cast  out  from  my 
mind  all  those  evil  spirits  of  proportion  ? 

Can  it  be  possible  that  any  one  of  my 
readers  has  ever  been  in  a  like  case?  Is 
there  hope  for  us,  my  brother  ?  You  have,  I 
perceive,  a  fine,  expressive,  sensitive  counten- 
ance. That  is,  indeed,  against  you  in  this 
race  for  manhood.  It  is  true  that  Apollo 
passed  for  a  man — but  that  was  long  ago, 
and  not  in  Britain.  You  have  a  pleasant, 
sympathetic  voice.  An  excellent  thing  in 
woman.  But  you,  my  friend, — break  it,  I 
beseech  you.  Coarsen  it  with  raw  spirits 
and  rawer  opinions ;  and  set  that  face  of 


THE   MEASURE   OF  A   MAN     135 

thine  with  hog's  bristles,  plant  a  shoe-brush 
on  thy  upper  lip,  and  send  thy  head  to  the 
turner  of  billiard  balls.  Else  come  not  nigh 
me,  for,  'fore  Heaven,  I  love  a  man  ! 

Sometimes,  however,  I  am  inclined  to  a 
more  comfortable  consideration  of  this  great 
question — for  it  is  one  of  my  weaknesses  to 
be  positive  on  few  matters.  But  to-day  I 
taunted  my  soul  with  its  unmanliness  till  it 
rose  in  rebellion  against  me.  '  Poor-spirited 
creature,'  I  said,  '  where  is  thy  valour  ? 
When  a  fool  has  struck  thee  I  have  seen  thee 
pass  on  without  a  word,  not  so  much  as  a 
momentary  knitting  of  thy  fist.  When 
ignorance  has  waxed  proud,  and  put  thee 
to  the  mock,  thou  hast  sat  meek,  and  uttered 
never  a  word.  It  must  needs  be  thou 
art  pigeon-livered  and  lack  gall !  There 
is  not  in  thee  the  swagger,  the  rustle,  the 
braggadocio  of  a  true  swashbuckler  manhood. 
Out  on  thee  ! ' 

And  my  soul  took  the  blows  in  patience. 

'  Hast  thou  any  courage  hid  in  any  crevice 
of  thee?'  I  continued  my  taunt.  And 
suddenly  my  soul  answered  with  a  firm  quiet 
voice  :  '  Try  me  ! ' 


136  PROSE    FANCIES 

Then  said  I,  '  Coward  as  thou  art,  fearful 
of  thy  precious  skin,  darest  thou  strike  a 
blow  for  the  weak  against  his  oppressor, 
darest  thou  meet  the  strong  tyrant  in  the 
way?' 

And  thereon  I  was  startled,  for  my  soul 
suddenly  sprang  up  within  me,  and,  lo !  it 
neighed  like  a  war-horse  for  the  battle. 

'  Ah ! '  I  continued,  '  but  couldst  thou  fight 
against  the  enemy  of  thy  land  ?  Surely  thy 
valour  would  melt  at  the  clash  of  swords  and 
the  voice  of  the  drum  ? ' 

And  the  answer  of  my  soul  was  like  the 
march  of  armed  men. 

Then  said  I  softly,  for  i  was  touched  by 
this  unwonted  valour  of  my  soul,  '  Soul ! 
wouldst  thou  die  for  thy  friend  ? ' 

And  the  voice  of  my  soul  came  sweet  as 
the  sound  of  bells  at  evening.  It  seemed, 
indeed,  as  though  it  could  dream  of  naught 
sweeter  than  to  die  for  one's  friend. 

This  colloquy  of  inner  and  outer  set  me 
further  reflecting.  Can  it  be  that  this  man- 
hood is,  after  all,  rather  a  quality  of  the 
spirit  than  of  the  body ;  that  it  is  to  be 
sought  rather  in  the  stout  heart  than  in  the 


THE   MEASURE   OF  A   MAN     137 

strong  arm  ;  that  big  words  and  ready  blows 
may,  like  a  display  of  bunting,  betoken  no 
true  loyalty,  and  be  but  the  gaudy  sign  to  a 
sorry  inn?  Dr.  Watts,  it  may  be  remem- 
bered, declared  the  mind  to  be  the  standard 
of  the  man.  As  he  was  the  author  of  a  book 
on  'The  Human  Mind/  envious  persons 
may  meanly  conceive  that  his  statement  was 
but  a  subtly-disguised  advertisement  of  his 
literary  wares. 

1  Were  I  so  tall  to  reach  the  Pole, 
Or  grasp  the  ocean  in  my  span, 
I  must  be  measured  by  my  soul : 
The  mind  's  the  standard  of  the  man.' 

The  fact  of  Dr.  Watts  being  also  a  man  of 
low  stature  does  not  affect  the  truth  or  un- 
truth of  this  fine  verse,  which  may  serve  to 
comfort  many.  One  may  assume  that  it  was 
Jack,  and  not  the  giant,  whom  we  would 
need  to  describe  as  the  true  man  of  the  two  ; 
and  one  seems  to  have  heard  of  some  '  fine,' 
'manly'  fellows,  darlings  of  the  football 
field  and  the  American  bar,  whose  actions 
somehow  have  not  altogether  justified  those 
epithets,  or,  at  any  rate,  certain  readings  of 
them.  Theirs  is  a  manhood,  one  fancies. 


138  PROSE    FANCIES 

that  is  given  to  shine  more  at  race-meetings 
and  in  hotel  parlours  than  at  home — revealed 
to  the  bar-maid,  and  strangely  hidden  from 
the  wife,  who,  indeed,  has  less  opportunities 
for  perceiving  it 

This  kind  of  manhood  is,  perhaps,  rather  a 
fashion  than  a  personal  quality :  a  way  of 
carrying  the  stick,  of  wearing,  or  not  wear- 
ing, the  hair ;  it  resides  in  the  twirl  of  the 
moustache,  or  the  cut  of  the  trouser  ;  you 
must  seek  it  in  the  quality  of  the  boot  and 
the  shape  of  the  hat  rather  than  in  the 
actions  of  the  wearer. 

Take  that  matter  of  the  hair.  When  next 
the  street-boy  sorrowfully  exclaims  on  your 
passing  that  '  it 's  no  wonder  the  barbers  all 
'list  for  soldiers,'  or  some  puny  idiot  at  your 
club — a  lilliputian  model  of  popular  'man- 
hood'— sniggers  to  his  friend  behind  his 
coffee  as  you  come  in :  call  to  mind  pictures 
of  certain  brave  '  tailed  men '  of  old,  at  the 
winking  of  whose  eyelid  your  tiny  club  'man  ' 
would  have  expired  on  the  instant.  Threaten 
him  with  a  Viking.  Show  him  in  a  vision  a 
band  of  blue-eyed  pirates,  with  their  wild 
hair  flying  in  the  breeze,  as  they  sternly 


THE   MEASURE   OF  A   MAN     139 

hasten  across  the  Northern  Sea.  Summon 
Godiva's  lord, '  his  beard  a  yard  before  him, 
and  his  hair  a  yard  behind.'  Call  up  the 
brave  picture  of  Rupert's  love-locked  Cava- 
liers, as  their  glittering  column  hurls  like  a 
bolt  of  heaven  to  the  charge,  or  Nelson's 
pig-tailed  sailors  in  Trafalgar's  Bay.  But, 
before  you  have  gone  half-way  through 
your  panorama,  that  club-mannikin  will 
have  hastily  departed,  leaving  his  coffee 
half-drunk,  and  you  shall  find  him  airing 
his  manhood  in  the  security  of  the  billiard- 
room. 

Yes,  for  us  who  are  denied  the  admiration 
of  the  billiard-marker ;  denied  the  devotion 
of  the  bar-maid  (with  charming  paradox  so- 
called)  ;  for  us  who  make  poor  braggarts, 
and  often  prefer  to  surrender  rather  than  to 
elbow  for  our  rights ;  for  us  who  deliver  our 
opinions  with  mean-spirited  diffidence,  and 
are  men  of  quiet  voices  and  ways :  for  us 
there  is  hope.  It  may  be  that  to  love  one's 
neighbour  is  also  a  part  of  manhood,  to 
suffer  quietly  for  another  as  true  a  piece  of 
bravery  as  to  fell  him  for  a  careless  word  ; 
it  may  be  that  purity,  constancy,  and  rever- 


140          PROSE    FANCIES 

ence  are  as  sure  criteria  of  manhood  as 
their  opposites.  It  may  be,  I  say ;  but  be 
certain  that  a  strong  beard,  a  harsh  voice, 
and  a  bull -dog  physiognomy  are  surer 
still 


THE    BLESSEDNESS   OF 
WOMAN 

HAVE  you  ever  remarked  as  a  curious  thing 
that,  whereas  every  day  we  hear  women  sigh- 
ing because  they  have  not  been  born  men, 
you  never  hear  a  sigh  blowing  in  the  other 
direction  ?  I  only  know  one  man  who  had 
the  courage  to  say  that  he  would  not  mind 
exchanging  into  the  female  infantry,  and  it 
may  have  been  affectation  on  his  part.  At 
any  rate,  he  blushed  deeply  at  the  avowal, 
and  his  friends  look  askance  at  him  ever 
since.  Of  course,  the  obvious  answer  of  the 
self-satisfied  male  is  that  he  is  the  lord  of 
creation,  that  his  is  the  better  part  which 
shall  not  be  taken  from  him.  Yet  this  does 
not  prevent  his  telling  his  wife  sometimes, 
when  oppressed  with  the  cares  of  this  world 
and  the  deceitfulness  of  riches,  that  'it  is 
nice  to  be  her.  Nothing  to  worry  her  all 

141 


142  PROSE    FANCIES 

day  long.  No  responsibility.'  For  in  his 
primitive  vision  of  female  existence,  his 
wife  languidly  presides  for  ever  at  an 
eternal  five-o'clock  tea.  And  it  is  not  in 
the  province  of  this  article  to  turn  to  him 
the  seamy  side  of  that  charming  picture. 
Rather  is  it  our  mission  to  convince  him  of 
the  substantial  truth  of  his  intuition.  He  is 
quite  right.  It  is  '  nice  to  be  her.'  And  if 
men  had  a  little  more  common-sense  in  their 
consequential  skulls,  instead  of  striving  to 
resist  the  woman's  invasion  of  their  imme- 
morial responsibilities  and  worries,  they  would 
joyfully  abdicate  them — and  skip  home  to 
Nirvana  and  afternoon  tea. 

Foolish  women !  To  want  of  your  own 
free  will  to  put  yourselves  in  painful  harness ; 
to  take  the  bit  of  servitude  between  your 
rose-leaf  lips  ;  to  fight  day-long  in  the 
reeking  arena  of  bacon  merchants  ;  to  settle 
accounts  instead  of  merely  incurring  them  ; 
to  be  confined  in  Stygian  city-blocks  instead 
of  silken  bedchambers  ;  to  rise  with  the 
sparrow  and  leave  by  the  early  morning 
train.  What  fatuity !  Some  day,  when 
woman  has  had  her  way  and  man  has  ceased 


THE  BLESSEDNESS  OF  WOMAN    143 

to  have  his  will,  she  will  see  of  the  travail 
of  her  soul  and  be  bitterly  dissatisfied  ;  for, 
unless  man  is  a  greater  fool  than  he  looks, 
she  shall  demand  back  her  petticoats  in 
vain. 

For  what  is  the  lot  of  woman  ?  The  first 
superficial  fact  about  a  woman  is,  of  course, 
her  beauty.  Secondly,  as  the  leaves  about  a 
rose,  comes  her  dress.  To  be  beautiful  and 
to  wear  pretty  things — these  are  two  of  the 
obvious  privileges  of  woman.  To  be  a 
living  rose,  with  bosom  of  gold  and  petals  of 
lace,  a  rose  each  passer-by  longs  to  pluck 
from  its  husband-stem,  but  dare  not  for  fear 
of  the  husband-thorns.  To  be  privileged  to 
play  Narcissus  all  day  long  with  your  mirror, 
to  love  yourself  so  much  that  you  kiss  the 
cold  reflection,  yet  fear  not  to  drown.  To 
reveal  yourself  to  yourself  in  a  thousand 
lovely  poses,  and  bird-like  poises  of  the  head. 
To  kneel  to  yourself  in  adoration,  to  laugh 
and  nod  and  beckon  to  yourself  with  your 
own  smiles  and  dimples,  to  yearn  in  hopeless 
passion  for  your  own  loveliness.  To  finger 
silken  garments,  linings  to  the  casket  of  your 
beauty,  never  seen  of  men,  to  draw  on  stiff 


144          PROSE    FANCIES 

embroidered  gowns,  to  deck  your  hands  with 
glittering  jewels,  and  your  wrists  with  bands 
of  gold — and  then  to  sail  forth  from  your 
boudoir  like  the  moon  from  a  cloud,  regally 
confident  of  public  worship  ;  to  be  at  once 
poet  and  poem,  painter  and  painted  :  does 
not  this  belong  to  the  lot  of  woman  ? 

But  it  was  of  nobler  privileges  than  these 
that  the  candidate  for  womanhood  of  whom 
I  have  spoken  was  thinking.  It  is  fit  that 
we  skim  the  surface  before  we  dive  into  the 
deeps — especially  so  attractive  a  surface  as 
woman's.  He  was,  doubtless,  thinking  less 
of  woman  as  a  home  comfort  or  a  beauty, 
and  much  more  of  her  as  she  once  used  to  be 
among  our  far-off  sires,  Sibyl  and  Priestess. 
Is  it  but  an  insular  fancy  to  suppose  that 
Englishmen,  beyond  any  other  race,  still 
retain  the  most  living  faith  in  the  sanctity  of 
womanhood  ?  and,  if  so,  can  it  be  doubted 
that  it  is  an  inheritance  from  those  wild 
child-hearted  Vikings,  who  were  first  among 
the  peoples  of  Europe  to  conceive  woman  as 
the  chosen  vessel  of  the  divine  ?  And  how 
wittily  true,  by  the  way,  how  slily  significant, 
was  both  the  Norse  and  the  Greek  concep- 


THE  BLESSEDNESS  OF  WOMAN    145 

tion  of  the  ruling  destinies  of  man,  the  Norns 
and  the  Fates,  as  women  ! 

To  speak  with  authority,  one  should, 
doubtless,  first  sprout  petticoats  ;  and,  mean- 
while, one  must  rest  content  with  asking 
the  intelligent  women  of  our  acquaintance 
— whether  man  inspires  them  with  anything 
like  the  feelings  of  reverential  adoration, 
the  sense  of  a  being  holy  and  supernal, 
with  which  woman  undoubtedly  inspires 
man.  He  is,  of  course,  their  god,  but  a  god 
of  the  Greek  pattern,  with  no  little  of  the 
familiarising  alloy  of  earth  in  his  composition. 
He  is  strong,  and  swift,  and  splendid — but 
seems  he  holy  ?  Is  he  angel  as  well  as  god  ? 
Does  the  dream  of  him  rise  silvery  in  the 
imagination  of  woman  ?  Is  he  a  star  to  lift 
her  up  to  heaven  with  pure  importunate  beam? 
I  seem  to  hear  the  nightingale-laughter  of 
women  for  answer.  Man  neither  is,  nor 
would  they  have  him,  any  of  these  things. 

But  though  some  men,  by  a  fortunate  admix- 
ture of  woman  silver  in  their  masculine  clay, 
may  be  even  these,  there  is  one  sacred  thing 
no  man  can  ever  be,  a  privilege  by  which 
nature  would  seem  to  have  put  beyond  doubt 
K 


146  PROSE    FANCIES 

the  divinity  of  woman  :  a  mother.  It  is  true 
that  it  is  within  his  reach  to  be  a  father  ;  but 
what  is  '  paternity '  compared  with  mother- 
hood ?  The  very  word  wears  a  droll  face,  as 
though  accustomed  to  banter.  Let  us  venture 
on  the  bull :  that,  though  it  be  possible  for 
most  men  to  be  fathers,  no  man  can  ever  be 
a  mother.  Maybe  a  recondite  intention  of 
the  dogma  of  the  Immaculate  Conception 
was  the  accentuation  of  the  fact  that  man's 
share  in  the  sacred  mystery  of  birth  is  so 
small  and  woman's  so  great,  that  the  birth  of 
a  child  is  truly  a  mysterious  traffic  between 
divine  powers  of  nature  and  her  miraculous 
womb — mystic  visitations  of  radiant  forces 
hidden  eternally  from  the  knowledge  of  man. 
We  stand  in  wonder  before  the  magical 
germinating  properties  of  a  clod  of  earth.  A 
grass-seed  and  a  thimbleful  of  soil  set  all  the 
sciences  at  nought.  But  if  such  is  the  wonder 
of  the  mere  spectator,  how  strange  to  be  the 
very  vessel  of  the  mystery,  to  know  it  moving 
through  its  mystic  stations  within  our  very 
bodies,  to  feel  the  tender  shoots  of  the  young 
life  striking  out  blade  after  blade,  already 
living  and  wonderful,  though  as  yet  unsus- 


THE  BLESSEDNESS  OF  WOMAN    147 

pected  of  other  eyes  ;  to  know  the  under- 
ground inarticulate  spring,  sweeter  far  than 
spring  of  bird  and  blossom,  while  as  yet  all 
seems  barren  winter  in  the  upper  air  ;  to  hear 
already  the  pathetic  pleadings  of  the  young 
life,  and  to  send  back  soothing  answer  along 
the  hidden  channels  of  tender  tremulous  affini- 
ties ;  to  lie  still  in  the  night  and  see  through 
the  darkness  the  little  white  soul  shining 
softly  in  its  birth-sleep,  slowly  filling  with  life 
as  a  moon  with  silver — it  was  a  woman  and 
not  a  man  that  God  chose  for  this  blessedness. 


VIRAGOES   OF   THE    BRAIN 

THE  strength  of  the  old-fashioned  virago 
was  in  her  muscles.  That  of  the  new- 
fangled modern  development  is  in  her 
'  reason  ' — a  very  different  thing  indeed  from 
'  woman's  reasons.'  As  the  former  knocked 
you  down  with  her  fist,  the  latter  fells  you 
with  her  brain.  In  her  has  definitely 
commenced  that  evolutionary  process  which, 
according  to  the  enchanting  dream  of  a  recent 
scientist,  is  to  make  the  'homo'  a  creature 
whose  legs  are  of  no  account,  poor  shrivelled 
vestiges  of  once  noble  calves  and  thighs ; 
and  whose  entire  significance  will  be  a 
noseless,  hairless  head,  in  shape  and  size 
like  an  idiot's,  which  the  scientist,  gloating 
over  the  ugly  duckling  of  his  distorted 
imagination,  describes  as  a  '  beautiful,  glitter- 
ing, hairless  dome ! '  A  sad  period  one 
fears  for  Gaiety  burlesque.  In  that  day 

148 


VIRAGOES   OF  THE   BRAIN     149 

a  beautifully  shaped  leg  and  a  fine  head 
of  hair  will  be  rather  a  disgrace  than  a 
distinction.  They  will  be  survivals  of  a 
barbarous  age.  Indeed  that  they  are  al- 
ready so  regarded,  there  can  be  no  doubt, 
by  the  more  '  advanced '  representatives  of 
the  female  sex. 

There  is  one  radical  difference  between 
the  old  and  the  new  virago  :  the  old  gloried 
in  the  fact  that  she  was  a  woman,  because 
thus  her  sex  triumphed  over  that  male  whom 
she  despised,  like  her  modern  sister,  in 
proportion  as  she  resembled  him.  The 
new  virago,  however,  hates  above  all  things 
to  be  reminded  of  her  womanhood,  which 
she  is  constantly  engaged  in  repressing 
with  Chinese  ferocity.  Not,  as  we  have 
hinted,  that  she  thinks  any  better  of  man. 
Though  she  dresses  as  like  him  as  possible, 
she  is  very  angry  if  you  suggest  that  she  at 
all  envies  him  his  birthright.  And  the 
humour  of  the  situation,  the  hopeless 
dilemma  in  which  she  thus  places  herself — 
if  it  be  right  to  apply  the  feminine  gender ! 
—  never  occurs  to  one  whose  sense  of 
humour  has  long  been  atrophied,  perhaps 


150          PROSE    FANCIES 

at  Girton,  or  by  a  course  of  sterilising  Ex- 
tension lectures. 

Obviously,  there  is  but  one  course  open 
for  the  advanced  'woman'  in  this  dilemma 
— to  evolve  a  third  sex  ;  and  this  she  is 
doing  her  best  to  achieve,  with,  I  am 
bound  to  admit,  remarkably  speedy  success. 
The  result  up  to  date  is  the  Virago  of  the 
Brain,  or  the  Female  Frankenstein.  The 
patentees  of  this  fearsome  tertium  quid  hope 
to  present  it  to  their  patrons,  within  a  very 
few  years,  in  a  form  entirely  devoid  of  certain 
physiological  defects,  with  which  the  cussed- 
ness  of  human  structure  still  uselessly 
burdens  the  Virago.  As  it  is,  of  course,  it 
is  by  no  means  uncommon  for  the  virago  to 
be  born  without  that  sentimental  organ,  the 
heart ;  and  it  can,  therefore,  only  be  a 
matter  of  time  before  she  is  rid  of  what  the 
present  writer  has  been  criticised  for  call- 
ing '  her  miraculous  womb.'  Doubtless,  the 
patentees  will  then  turn  their  attention  to 
Sir  Thomas  Browne's  suggested  method  for 
the  propagation  of  the  race  after  the  reason- 
able, civilised,  and  advanced  manner  of  trees. 

But   I  am  warned  that  I   commit  impro- 


VIRAGOES   OF   THE   BRAIN     151 

priety  even  in  naming  such  matters.  They 
are  'sacred,' — which  means  that  we  ought  to  be 
ashamed  to  mention  them,  however  reverent 
our  intention.  Motherhood,  it  would  appear, 
is  not,  as  one  had  regarded  it,  a  sanctifying 
privilege,  but  a  shameful  disability,  of  which 
not  the  Immaculate  Conception,  but  the 
ignoble  service  for  the  '  purification '  of 
women,  is  the  significant  symbol.  It 
behoves  not  only  the  unmarried,  but  the 
married  mothers,  so  to  speak,  to  wear  far- 
thingales upon  the  subject,  and  pretend, 
with  as  grave  a  face  as  possible,  that  babies 
are  really  found  under  cabbages,  or  sent 
parcel  post,  on  application,  by  her  Majesty 
the  Queen. 

How  long  are  we  to  retain  the  pernicious 
fallacy  that  sacredness  is  a  quality  inhjsr- 
ing  not  in  the  sacred  object  itself,  but  in  the 
superstitious  'decencies'  that  swaddle  it,  or 
that  we  best  reverence  such  sacred  object  by 
a  prurient  prudish  conspiracy  of  silence 
concerning  it  ? 

Then  there  is,  it  would  also  appear,  a 
particular  indignity,  from  the  new  virago's 
point  of  view,  in  the  assumption  that  a 


152          PROSE    FANCIES 

woman's  beauty  is  one  of  her  great  missions, 
or  the  supposition  that  she  takes  any  such 
pride  in  it  herself  as  man  has  from  time 
immemorial  supposed.  No  sensible  woman, 
we  have  been  indignantly  assured,  ever 
plays  at  Narcissus  with  her  mirror.  That 
all  women  find  such  pleasure  in  their  reflec- 
tions no  one  would  think  of  saying.  How 
could  they,  poor  things  ?  One  is  quite 
ready  to  admit  that  probably  our  virago 
looks  in  her  glass  as  seldom  as  possible. 
But  all  sensible  women  that  are  beautiful  as 
well  should  take  joy  in  their  own  charms,  if 
they  have  any  feelings  of  gratitude  towards 
the  supernal  powers  which  might  have  made 
them — well,  more  advanced  than  beautiful, 
and  given  them  a  head  full  of  cheap  philo- 
sophy instead  of  a  transfiguring  head  of 
hair. 

No  one  wants  a  woman  to  be  silly  and 
vain  about  her  beauty.  But  vanity  and 
conceit  are  qualities  that  exist  in  people 
quite  independently  of  their  gifts  and 
graces.  The  ugly  and  stupid  are  perhaps 
more  often  conceited  than  the  beautiful  or 
the  clever, — vain,  it  would  appear,  of  their 


VIRAGOES   OF  THE   BRAIN     153 

very  ugliness  and  stupidity.  Besides,  is  it 
any  worse  for  a  woman  to  be  vain  of  her 
looks  than  of  her  brains  ? — and  the  advanced 
woman  is  without  doubt  most  inordinately 
vain  of  those.  Of  the  two,  so  far  as  they 
are  at  present  developed,  is  there  any  doubt 
that  the  woman  with  beauty  is  better  off 
than  the  woman  with  brains  ?  In  some 
few  hundred  years,  maybe,  the  brain  of 
woman  will  be  a  joy  to  herself  and  the 
world  :  when  she  has  got  more  used  to  its 
possession,  and  familiar  with  the  fruitful 
control  of  it.  At  present,  however,  it  is 
merely  a  discomfort,  not  to  say  a  danger, 
to  herself  and  every  one  else — a  tiresome 
engine  for  the  pedantic  assimilation  of  Ger- 
man and  the  higher  mathematics.  And  it 
may  well  happen — horrid  prophecy — that 
when  that  brain  of  woman  has  come  to  its 
perfection,  the  flower  of  its  meditation  will 
be  to  realise  the  significance,  the  sacredness, 
of  the  Simple  Woman.  It  is  in  its  appre- 
hension of  the  mystery  of  simplicity  that 
the  brain  of  man,  at  present,  is  superior  to 
that  of  woman. 

Young  brain  delights  in  the  complex,  old 


154  PROSE  FANCIES 
in  the  simple.  Woman's  love  of  the  com- 
plex has  been  illustrated  abundantly  during 
the  last  few  years,  in  her  enthusiasm  for 
certain  great  imperfect  writers,  who  have 
been  able  to  stir  up  the  mud  in  the  fountain 
of  life  (doubtless,  to  medicinal  ends)  but 
unable  to  bring  it  clear  again.  An  eternal 
enigma  herself,  woman  is  eternally  in  love 
with  enigmas.  Like  a  child,  she  loves  any 
one  who  will  show  her  the  '  works  '  of  exist- 
ence, and  she  is  still  in  that  inquisitive  stage 
when  one  imagines  that  the  inside  of  a  doll 
will  afford  explanation  of  its  fascinating 
exterior.  It  is  no  use  telling  her  that 
analysis  can  never  explain  the  mystery  of 
synthesis.  Like  an  American  humourist,  she 
still  goes  on  wanting  '  t'  know.' 

Even  more  than  man,  she  exaggerates  the 
value  of  the  articulate,  the  organised.  She  has 
always  been  in  love  with  '  accomplishments,' 
and  she  loves  natures  that  are  minted  into 
current  coin  of  ready  gifts  and  graces.  She 
cares  more  for  the  names  of  things  than  for  the 
things  themselves.  Of  things  without  names 
she  is  impatient.  Talkative  as  she  is  said  to 
be,  and  in  so  many  modern  languages,  she 


VIRAGOES   OF   THE   BRAIN     155 

knows  not  yet  how  to  talk  with  Silence — un- 
less she  be  the  inspired  Simple  Woman — for 
to  talk  with  Silence  is  to  apprehend  the 
mystic  meanings  of  simplicity.  For  this 
reason,  mystics  are  more  often  found  among 
men  than  women  —  a  fact  on  which  the 
Pioneer  Club  is  at  liberty  to  congratulate 
itself.  What  advanced  woman  understands 
that  saying  of  Paracelsus  :  '  who  tastes  a  crust 
of  bread  tastes  the  heavens  and  all  the  stars.' 
Else  would  she  understand  also  that  the 
'  humblest'  ministrations  of  life,  those  nearest 
to  nature,  are  the  profoundest  in  their  sig- 
nificance :  that  it  means  as  much  to  bake  a 
loaf  as  to  write  a  book,  and  that  to  watch 
over  the  sleep  of  a  child  is  a  liberal  educa- 
tion —  nay,  an  initiation  granted  only  to 
mothers  and  those  meek  to  whom  mysteries 
are  revealed.  It  has  always  been  to  the 
simple  woman  that  the  angel  has  appeared — 
to  Mary  of  Bethany,  to  Joan  of  Arc.  Is  it 
impious  to  infer  that  the  Angel  Gabriel  him- 
self dreads  a  blue-stocking  ?  What  chance 
indeed  would  he  have  with  our  modern 
viragoes  of  the  brain,  the  mighty  daughters 
of  the  pen  ? 


THE    EYE   OF   THE 
BEHOLDER 

OTHER  people's  poetry — I  don't  mean  their 
published  verse,  but  their  absurdly  romantic 
view  of  unromantic  objects — is  terribly  hard 
to  translate.  It  seldom  escapes  being  turned 
into  prose.  It  must  have  happened  to  you 
now  and  again  to  have  had  the  photograph 
of  your  friend's  beloved  produced  for  your 
inspection  and  opinion.  It  is  a  terrible 
moment.  If  she  does  happen  to  be  a  really 
pretty  girl — heavens  !  what  a  relief.  You 
praise  her  with  almost  hysterical  gratitude. 
But  if,  as  is  far  more  likely,  her  beauty  proves 
to  be  of  that  kind  which  exists  only  in  the 
eyes  of  a  single  beholder,  what  a  plight  is 
yours  !  How  you  strive  to  look  as  if  she  were 
a  new  Helen,  and  how  hopelessly  unconvinc- 
ing is  your  weary  expression — as  unconvinc- 
ing as  one's  expression  when,  having  weakly 

156 


THE  EYE  OF  THE  BEHOLDER    157 

pretended  acquaintance  with  a  strange  author, 
we  feign  ecstatic  recognition  of  some  passage 
or  episode  quoted  by  his  ruthless  admirer. 
There  is  this  hope  in  the  case  of  the  photo- 
graph :  that  its  amorous  possessor  will 
probably  be  incapable  of  imagining  any  one 
insensitive  to  such  a  Golconda  of  charms,  and 
you  have  always  in  your  power  the  revenge 
of  showing  him  your  own  sacred  graven 
image. 

Is  it  not  curious  that  the  very  follies  we 
delight  in  for  ourselves  should  seem  so 
stupid,  so  absolutely  vulgar,  when  practised 
by  others?  The  last  illusion  to  forsake  a 
man  is  the  absolute  belief  in  his  own  refine- 
ment. 

A  test  experience  in  other  people's  poetry 
is  to  sit  in  the  pit  of  a  theatre  and  watch 
'Any  and  'Arriet  making  love  and  eating 
oranges  simultaneously.  'Any  has  a  low 
forehead,  close,  black,  oily  hair,  his  eyes  and 
nose  are  small,  and  his  face  is  freckled.  His 
clothes  are  painfully  his  best,  he  wears  an 
irrelevant  flower,  and  his  tie  has  escaped  from 
the  stud  and  got  high  into  his  neck,  eclipsing 
his  collar.  'Arriet  has  thick  unexpressive 


158  PROSE    FANCIES 

features,  relying  rather  on  the  expressiveness 
of  her  flaunting  hat,  she  wears  a  straight 
fringe  low  down  on  her  forehead,  and 
endeavours  to  disguise  her  heavy  ennui 
by  an  immovable  simper.  This  pair  loll 
one  upon  each  other.  Whether  lights  be 
high  or  low  they  hold  each  other's  hands, 
hands  hard  and  coarse  with  labour,  with 
nails  bitten  down  close  to  the  quick. 
But,  for  all  that,  they,  in  their  strange 
uncouth  fashion,  would  seem  to  be  loving 
each  other.  '  Not  we  alone  have  passions 
hymeneal,'  sings  an  aristocratic  poet.  They 
smile  at  each  other,  an  obvious  animal 
smile,  and  you  perhaps  shudder.  Or  you 
study  them  for  a  realistic  novel,  or  you  call 
up  that  touch  of  nature  our  great  poet 
talks  of.  But  somehow  you  cannot  forget 
how  their  lips  will  stick  and  smell  of  oranges 
when  they  kiss  each  other  on  the  way  home. 
What  is  the  truth  about  this  pair  ?  Is  it  in 
the  unlovely  details  on  which,  maybe,  we 
have  too  much  insisted — or  behind  these  are 
we  to  imagine  their  souls  radiant  in  celestial 
nuptials  ? 

Mr.  Chevalier  may  be  said  to  answer  the 


THE  EYE  OF  THE  BEHOLDER    159 

question  in  his  pictures  of  coster  love-making. 
But  are  those  pictures  to  be  taken  as  docu- 
ments, or  are  they  not  the  product  of  Mr. 
Chevalier's  idealistic  temperament  ?  Does 
the  coster  actually  worship  his  '  dona '  with 
so  fine  a  chivalry?  Is  he  so  sentimentally 
devoted  to  his  '  old  Dutch'?  If  you  answer 
the  question  in  the  negative,  you  are  in  this 
predicament :  all  the  love  and  '  the  fine  feel- 
ings '  remain  with  the  infinitesimal  residuum 
of  the  cultured  and  professionally  '  refined.' 
Does  that  residuum  actually  incarnate  all  the 
love,  devotion,  honour,  and  other  noble 
qualities  in  man  ?  One  need  hardly  trouble 
to  answer  the  absurd  question.  Evidently 
behind  the  oranges,  and  the  uncouth  animal 
manners,  we  should  find  souls  much  like  our 
own  refined  essences,  had  we  the  seeing 
sympathetic  eye.  All  depends  on  the  eye  of 
the  beholder. 

Among  the  majority  of  literary  and  artistic 
people  of  late  that  eye  of  the  beholder  has 
been  a  very  cynical  supercilious  eye.  Never 
was  such  a  bitter  cruel  war  waged  against 
the  poor  bourgeois.  The  lack  of  humanity  in 
recent  art  and  literature  is  infinitely  depress- 


i6o  PROSE    FANCIES 

ing.  Doubtless,  it  is  the  outcome  of  a 
so-called  '  realism,'  which  dares  to  pretend 
that  the  truth  about  life  is  to  be  found  on  its 
grimy  pock-marked  surface.  Over  against 
the  many  robust  developments  of  democracy, 
and  doubtless  inspired  by  them,  is  a  marked 
spread  of  the  aristocratic  spirit — selfish, 
heartless,  subtle,  of  mere  physical  '  refine- 
ment ' ;  a  spirit,  too,  all  the  more  inhuman 
because  it  is  for  the  most  part  not  tempered 
by  any  intercourse  with  homely  dependants, 
as  in  the  feudal  aristocracy.  It  would 
seem  to  be  the  product  of  '  the  higher 
education,'  a  university  priggishness,  poor 
as  proud.  It  is  the  deadliest  spirit 
abroad ;  but,  of  course,  though  it  may 
poison  life  and  especially  art  for  a  while, 
the  great  laughing  democracy  will  in  good 
time  dispose  of  it  as  Hercules  might  crush 
a  wasp. 

This  is  the  spirit  that  draws  up  its  skirts 
and  sneers  to  itself  at  poor  '  old  bodies '  in 
omnibuses,  because,  forsooth,  they  are  stout, 
and  out  of  the  fulness  of  the  heart  the  mouth 
speaketh.  One  thinks  of  Falstaff's  plaintive 
'  If  to  be  fat  is  to  be  hated ! '  At  displays  of 


THE  EYE  OF  THE  BEHOLDER    161 

natural  feelings  of  any  sort  this  comfortless 
evil  spirit  ever  curls  the  lip.  Inhabiting 
modern  young  ladies,  it  is  especially  superior 
to  the  maternal  instinct,  and  cringes  from 
a  baby  in  a  railway  carriage  as  from  an 
adder.  At  the  dropping  of  an  '  h '  ft 
shrinks  as  though  the  weighty  letter  1.  1 
fallen  upon  its  great  toe,  and  it  will  forgive 
anything  rather  than  a  provincial  accent.  It 
lives  entirely  in  the  surfaces  of  things,  and,  as 
the  surface  of  life  is  frequently  rough  and 
prickly,  it  is  frequently  uncomfortable.  At 
such  times  it  peevishly  darts  out  its  little 
sting,  like  a  young  snake  angry  with  a  farmer's 
boot.  It  is  amusing  to  watch  it  venting  its 
spleen  in  papers  the  bourgeois  never  read,  in 
pictures  they  don't  trouble  to  understand. 
John  Bull's  indifference  to  the '  new '  criticism 
is  one  of  the  most  pleasing  features  of  the 
time.  Probably  he  has  not  yet  heard  a 
syllable  of  it,  and,  if  he  should  hear,  he  would 
probably  waive  it  aside  with,  '  I  have  some- 
thing more  to  think  of  than  these  megrims.' 
And  so  he  has.  While  these  superior  folk 
are  wrangling  about  D£gas  and  Mallarm£, 
about '  style '  and  '  distinction,'  he  is  doing  the 


162  PROSE    FANCIES 

work  of  the  world.  There  is  nothing  in  life 
so  much  exaggerated  as  the  importance  of  art. 
If  it  were  all  wiped  off  the  surface  of  the 
earth  to-morrow,  the  world  would  scarcely 
miss  it.  For  what  is  art  but  a  faint  reflection 
of  the  beauty  already  sown  broadcast  over 
the  face  of  the  world?  And  that  would  re- 
main. We  should  lose  Leonardo  and  Titian, 
Velasquez  and  Rembrandt,  and  a  great 
host  of  modern  precious  persons,  but  the 
stars  and  the  great  trees,  the  noble  sculptured 
hills,  the  golden-dotted  meadows,  the  airy 
sailing  clouds,  and  all  the  regal  pageantry  of 
the  seasons,  would  still  be  ours  ;  and  an 
almond-tree  in  flower  would  replace  the 
National  Gallery. 

Yes,  surely  the  true  way  of  contemplating 
these  undistinguished  masses  of  humanity, 
this  '  h '  dropping,  garlic-eating,  child-beget- 
ting bourgeois,  is  Shakespeare's,  Dickens', 
Whitman's  way — through  the  eye  of  a  gentle 
sympathetic  beholder — one  who  understands 
Nature's  trick  of  hiding  her  most  precious 
things  beneath  rough  husks  and  in  rank  and 
bearded  envelopes  —  and  not  through  the 
eye-glass  of  the  new  critic. 


THE  EYE  OF  THE  BEHOLDER    163 

For  these  undistinguished  people  are,  after 
all,  alive  as  their  critics  are  not.  They  are, 
indeed,  the  only  people  who  may  properly  be 
said  to  be  alive,  dreaming  and  building  while 
the  superior  person  stands  by  cogitating 
sarcasms  on  their  swink'd  and  dusty  appear- 
ances. More  of  the  true  spirit  of  romantic 
existence  goes  to  the  opening  of  a  little 
grocer's  shop  in  a  back  street  in  Whitechapel 
than  to  all  the  fine  marriages  at  St.  George's, 
Hanover  Square,  in  a  year.  But,  of  course 
all  depends  on  the  eye  of  the  beholder. 


TRANSFERABLE    LIVES 

I  SOMETIMES  have  a  fancy  to  speculate  how, 
supposing  the  matter  still  undecided,  I  would 
like  to  spend  my  life.  Often  I  feel  how  good 
it  would  be  to  give  it  in  service  to  one  of  my 
six  dear  friends :  just  to  offer  it  to  them  as 
so  much  capital,  for  whatever  it  may  be  worth. 
In  pondering  the  fancy,  I  need  hardly  say 
that  I  do  not  assess  myself  at  any  extrava- 
gant value.  I  but  venture  to  think  that  the 
devotion  of  one  human  creature,  however 
humble,  throughout  a  lifetime,  is  not  a 
despicable  offering.  To  use  me  as  they 
would,  to  fetch  and  carry  with  me,  to  draw 
on  me  for  whatever  force  resides  in  me,  as 
they  would  on  a  bank  account,  to  the  last 
penny,  to  use  my  brains  for  their  plans,  my 
heart  for  their  love,  my  blood  for  added 
length  of  days :  and  thus  be  so  much  the 
more  true  in  their  love,  the  more  prosperous 


TRANSFERABLE   LIVES     165 

in  their  business,  the  more  buoyant  in  their 
health — by  the  addition  of  me, 

But  then  embarrassment  comes  upon  me. 
Which  of  my  friends  do  I  love  the  most? 
To  whose  account  of  the  six  would  I  fain  be 
credited?  Then  again  I  think  of  the  ten 
thousand  virgins,  who  go  mateless  about  the 
world,  sweet  women,  with  hearts  like  hidden 
treasure,  awaiting  the  '  Prince's  kiss '  that 
never  comes  ;  virgin  mothers,  whose  bosoms 
shall  never  know  the  light  warm  touch  of 
baby-hands : 

1  Pale  primroses 

That  die  unmarried,  ere  they  can  behold 
Bright  Phoebus  in  his  strength. ' 

How  often  one  sees  such  a  one  in  train  or 
omnibus,  her  eyes,  maybe,  spilling  the  pre- 
cious spikenard  of  their  maternal  love  on  some 
happier  woman's  child.  I  noticed  one  of 
them  withering  on  the  stalk,  on  my  way  to 
town  this  morning.  She  was,  I  surmised, 
nearly  twenty-eight,  she  carried  a  roll  of 
music,  and  I  had  a  strong  impression  that 
she  was  the  sole  support  of  an  invalid 
mother.  I  could  hardly  resist  suggesting  to 
one  of  my  men  companions,  what  a  good 


166  PROSE    FANCIES 

wife  she  was  longing  to  make,  what  a 
Sleeping  Beauty  she  was,  waiting  for  the 
marital  kiss  that  would  set  all  the  sweet  bells 
of  her  nature  a-chime.  I  had  the  greatest 
difficulty  in  preventing  myself  from  leaning 
over  to  her,  and  putting  it  to  her  in  this  way : 

'  Excuse  me,  madam,  but  I  love  you. 
Will  you  be  my  wife?  I  am  just  turning 
thirty.  I  have  so  much  a  year,  a  comfortable 
little  home,  and  probably  another  thirty 
years  of  life  to  spend.  Will  you  not  go 
shares  with  me  ? ' 

And  my  imagination  went  on  making 
pictures :  how  her  eyes  would  suddenly 
brighten  up  like  the  northern  aurora,  how 
a  strange  bloom  would  settle  on  her  some- 
what weary  face,  and  a  dimple  steal  into  her 
chin ;  how,  when  she  reached  home  and  sat 
down  to  read  Jane  Austen  to  her  mother, 
her  mother  would  suddenly  imagine  roses  in 
the  room,  and  she  would  blushingly  answer, 
'  Nay,  mother — it  is  my  cheeks  ! ' ;  and 
presently  the  mother  would  ask,  'Where  is 
that  smell  of  violets  coming  from?'  and  again 
she  would  answer,  '  Nay,  mother — it  is  my 
thoughts  ! ' ;  and  yet  again  the  mother  would 


TRANSFERABLE    LIVES    167 

say,  '  Hush !  listen  to  that  wonderful  bird 
singing  yonder ! '  and  she  would  answer, 
'  Nay,  mother  dear — it  is  only  my  heart ! ' 

But,  alas,  she  alighted  at  Charing  Cross, 
and  not  one  of  us  in  the  compartment  had 
asked  her  to  be  his  wife. 

The  weary  clerk,  the  sweated  shopman, 
the  jaded  engineer — how  good  it  would  be  to 
say  to  any  of  them,  '  Here,  let  us  change 
places  awhile.  Here  is  my  latch-key,  my 
cheque-book,  my  joy  and  my  leisure.  Use 
them  as  long  as  you  will.  Quick,  let  us 
change  clothes,  and  let  me  take  my  share  of 
the  world's  dreariness  and  pain.' 

Or  to  stop  the  old  man  of  sixty,  as  he 
hobbles  down  the  hill,  with  never  a  thought 
of  youth  or  spring  in  his  heart,  not  a  ho^e  in 
his  pocket,  and  his  faith  long  since  run  cLy — 
to  stop  him  and  say :  '  See,  here  are  thirty 
years  ;  I  have  no  use  for  them.  Will  you 
not  take  them  ?  If  you  are  quick,  you  may 
yet  catch  up  Phyllis  by  the  stile.  She  has 
a  wonderful  rose  in  her  hand.  She  will  sell 
it  you  for  these  thirty  years  ;  and  she  knows 
a  field  where  a  lark  is  singing  as  though  it 
were  in  heaven  ! ' 


168  PROSE    FANCIES 

To  take  the  old  lady  from  the  bath-chair, 
and  let  her  run  with  her  daughter  to  gather 
buttercups,  or  make  eyes  at  the  church 
gallants.  Oh !  this  were  better  far  than 
living  to  oneself,  if  we  were  only  selfish 
enough  to  see  it ! 

But,  best  of  all  were  it  to  go  to  the 
churchyard,  where  the  dead  have  long  since 
given  up  all  hopes  of  resurrection,  and  find 
some  new  grave,  whose  inhabitant  was  not 
yet  so  fast  asleep  but  that  he  might  be 
awakened  by  a  kind  word.  To  go  to  Alice's 
grave  and  call,  '  Alice !  Alice ! '  and  then 
whisper  :  '  The  spring  is  here  !  Didn't  you 
hear  the  birds  calling  you  ?  I  have  come  to 
tell  you  it  is  time  to  get  ready.  In  two 
hours  the  church-bells  will  be  ringing,  and 
Edward  will  be  waiting  for  you  at  the  altar. 
The  organist  is  already  trying  over  the 
fc  Wedding  March,'  and  the  bridesmaids  have 
had  their  dresses  on  and  off  twice.  They 
can  talk  of  nothing  but  orange-blossom  and 
rice.  Alice,  dear,  awaken.  Ah,  did  you 
have  strange  dreams,  poor  girl — dream  that 
you  were  dead !  Indeed,  it  was  a  dream — 
an  evil  dream.' 


TRANSFERABLE    LIVES    169 

And,  then,  as  Alice  stepped  bewildered 
homewards,  to  steal  down  into  her  place,  and 
listen,  and  listen,  till  the  sound  of  carriages 
rolled  towards  the  gate,  listen  till  the  low 
hush  of  the  marriage  service  broke  into  the 
wild  happy  laughter  of  the  organ,  and  the 
babbling  sound  of  sweet  girls  stole  through 
the  church  porch ;  then  to  lie  back  and  to 
think  that  Alice  and  Edward  had  been 
married  after  all — that  your  little  useless  life 
had  been  so  much  use,  at  least :  just  to 
dream  of  that  awhile,  and  then  softly  fall 
asleep. 

Ah,  who  would  not  give  all  his  remaining 
days  to  ransom  his  beloved  dead  ? — to  give 
them  the  joys  they  missed,  the  hopes  they 
clutched  at,  the  dreams  they  dreamed. 
O  river  that  runs  so  sweetly  by  their  feet, 
when  you  shall  have  stopped  running  will 
they  rise?  O  sun  that  shines  above  their 
heads,  when  you  have  ceased  from  shining 
will  they  come  to  us  again?  When  the 
lark  shall  have  done  with  singing,  and  the 
hawthorn  bud  no  more,  shall  we  then, 
indeed,  hear  the  voices  of  our  beloved, 
sweeter  than  song  of  river  or  bird  ? 


THE  APPARITION  OF  YOUTH 

SENTENTIOUS  people  are  fond  of  telling  us 
that  we  change  entirely  every  seven  years, 
that  in  that  time  every  single  atomy  of  body 
(and  soul  ?)  finds  a  substitute.  Personally,  I 
am  of  opinion  that  we  change  oftener,  that 
rather  we  are  triennial  in  our  constitu- 
tion. In  fact,  it  is  a  change  we  owe  to  our 
spiritual  cleanliness.  But  there  is  a  truth 
pertaining  to  the  change  of  which  the  sen- 
tentious people  are  not,  I  think,  aware. 
When  they  speak  of  our  sloughing  our  dead 
selves,  they  imagine  the  husk  left  behind  as 
a  dead  length  of  hollow  scale  or  skin. 
Would  it  were  so.  These  sententious  people, 
with  all  their  information,  have  probably 
never  gone  through  the  process  of  which 
they  speak.  They  have  never  changed  from 
the  beginning,  but  have  been  consistently 

their  dull  selves  all  through.     To  those,  how- 
170 


THE  APPARITION  OF  YOUTH     171 

ever,  who  can  look  back  on  many  a  meta- 
morphosis, the  quick-change  artists  of  life, 
a  fearful  thing  is  known.  The  length  of  dis- 
carded snake  lies  glistering  in  the  greenwood, 
motionless,  and  slowly  perishes  with  the 
fallen  leaves  in  autumn.  But  for  the  dead 
self  is  no  autumn.  By  some  mysterious 
law  of  spiritual  propagation,  it  breaks  away 
from  us,  a  living  thing,  as  the  offspring  of 
primitive  organisms  are,  it  is  said,  broken  off 
the  tail  of  their  sole  and  undivided  parent. 
It  goes  on  living  as  we  go  on  living ;  often, 
indeed  if  we  be  poets  or  artists,  it  survives  us 
many  years  ;  it  may  be  a  friend,  but  it  is 
oftener  a  foe  ;  and  it  is  always  a  sad 
companion. 

I  sat  one  evening  in  my  sumptuous 
library  near  Rutland  Gate.  I  was  deep  in 
my  favourite  author,  my  bank-book,  when 
presently  an  entry — as  a  matter  of  fact,  a 
quarterly  allowance  to  a  friend  (well,  a 
woman  friend)  of  my  youth — set  me  think- 
ing. Just  then  my  man  entered.  A  youth 
wished  to  see  me.  He  would  not  give  his 
name,  but  sent  word  that  I  knew  him  very 
well  for  all  that  Being  in  a  good  humour,  I 


172          PROSE    FANCIES 

consented  to  see  him.  He  was  a  young  man 
of  about  twenty,  and  his  shabby  clothes 
could  not  conceal  that  he  was  comely.  He 
entered  the  room  with  light  step  and  chin 
in  air,  and  to  my  surprise  he  strode  over 
to  where  I  sat  and  seated  himself  without  a 
word.  Then  he  looked  at  me  with  his  blue 
eyes,  and  I  recognised  him  with  a  start 
'What's  the  new  book?'  he  asked  eagerly, 
pointing  to  my  open  bank-book. 

Bending  over  he  looked  at  it :  '  Pshaw ! 
Figures.  You  used  not  to  care  much  about 
them.  When  we  were  together  it  used  to  be 
Swinburne's  Poems  and  Ballads^  or  Shake- 
speare's Sonnets  \ ' 

As  he  spoke,  he  tugged  a  faded  copy  of 
the  Sonnets  from  his  pocket.  It  slipped 
from  his  hand.  As  it  fell  it  opened,  and 
faded  violets  rained  from  its  leaves.  The 
youth  gathered  them  up  carefully,  as  though 
they  had  been  valuable,  and  replaced  them. 

'  How  do  you  sell  your  violets  ? '  I  asked, 
ironically.  '  I  '11  give  you  a  pound  apiece  for 
them ! ' 

*  A  pound !  Twenty  pounds  apiece 
wouldn't  buy  them,'  he  laughed,  and  I 


THE  APPARITION  OF  YOUTH     173 

remembered  that  they  were  the  violets  Alice 
Sunshine  and  I  had  gathered  one  spring  day 
when  I  was  twenty.  We  had  found  them  in 
a  corner  of  the  dingle,  where  I  had  been 
reading  the  Sonnets  to  her,  till  in  our  book 
that  day  we  read  no  more.  As  we  parted 
she  pressed  them  between  the  leaves  and 
kissed  them.  I  remember,  too,  that  I  had 
been  particular  to  write  the  day  and  hour 
against  them,  and  I  remember  further  how 
it  puzzled  me  a  couple  of  years  after  what 
the  date  could  possibly  mean. 

Having  secured  his  book,  my  visitor  once 
more  looked  me  straight  in  the  face,  and  as 
he  did  so  he  seemed  to  grow  perplexed 
and  disappointed.  As  I  gazed  at  him  my 
contentment,  too,  seemed  to  be  slowly 
melting  away.  Five  minutes  before  I  had 
felt  the  most  comfortable  bourgeois  in  the 
world.  There  seemed  nothing  I  was  in  need 
of,  but  there  was  something  about  this  youth 
that  was  dangerously  disillusionising.  Here 
was  I  already  envying  him  his  paltry  violets. 
I  was  even  weak  enough  to  offer  him  five 
pounds  apiece  for  them,  but  he  still  smilingly 
shook  his  head. 


1/4  PROSE    FANCIES 

'  Well ! '  he  said  presently, '  what  have  you 
been  doing  with  yourself  all  these  years  ? ' 

I  told  him  of  my  marriage  and  my  partner- 
ship in  a  big  city  house. 

'  Phew  ! '  he  said.  '  Monstrous  dull,  isn't 
it?  As  for  me,  I  never  intend  to  marry. 
And  if  you  don't  marry,  what  do  you  want 
with  money  ?  You  used  to  despise  it  enough 
once.  And  do  you  remember  our  favourite 
line :  "  Our  loves  into  corpses  or  wives  ?  " 

f  Hush  ! '  I  said,  for  wives  have  ears. 

'  Is  it  Alice  Sunshine  ? '  he  asked. 

'  No,'  I  said,  '  not  Alice  Sunshine.' 

'Maud  Willow?' 

'  No,  not  Maud  Willow.' 

'Jenny  Hopkins?' 

'  No,  not  Jenny  Hopkins.' 

'  Lucy  Rainbow  ?  ' 

'  No,  not  Lucy  Rainbow.' 

'Now  who  else  was  there?  I  cannot 
remember  them  all.  Ah,  I  remember  now. 
It  wasn't  Lilian,  after  all  ? ' 

'  No,  poor  Lilian  died  ten  years  ago.  I 
am  afraid  you  don't  know  my  wife.  I  don't 
think  you  ever  met.' 

'  It  isn't  Edith  Appleblossom,  surely  ?  Is  it' 


THE  APPARITION  OF  YOUTH     175 

'  No,  I  .  .  .'  and  then  I  stopped  just  in 
time  !  '  No,  you  don't  know  my  wife,  I  'm 
sure,  and  if  you  don't  mind  my  saying  so,  I 
think  I  had  better  not  introduce  you.  For- 
give me,  but  she  wouldn't  quite  understand 
you,  I  fear  .  .  .' 

'Wouldn't  quite  approve,  eh?'  said  he, 
with  a  merry  laugh.  '  Poor  old  chap  ! ' 

'  Well,  I  'm  better  off  than  that,'  he  con- 
tinued. '  Why,  Doll  and  I  love  for  a  week, 
and  then  forget  each  other's  names  in  a 
twelvemonth,  when  Poll  comes  along,  and  so 
on.  And  neither  of  us  is  any  the  worse, 
believe  me.  We're  one  as  fickle  as  the 
other,  so  where 's  the  harm  ? ' 

'  Ah,  my  dear  fellow,  you  did  make  a 
mistake,'  he  ran  on.  '  I  suppose  you  forget 
Robert  Louis'  advice — "  Times  are  changed 
with  him  who  marries"  etc.' 

'  He 's  married  himself,'  I  replied. 

'And  I  suppose  you  never  drop  in  for  a  pipe 
at  "  The  Three  Tuns  "  now  of  an  evening  ? ' 

'  No !  I  haven't  been  near  the  place  these 
many  years.' 

'  Poor  old  fellow !  The  Bass  is  superb  at 
present. 


i;6         PROSE  FANCIES 

I  recollected.  '  Won't  you  have  some  wine 
with  me  ? '  I  said.  '  I  have  some  fine  old 
Chianti.  And  take  a  cigar  ? ' 

'  No,  thanks,  old  man.  I  'm  too  sad. 
Come  with  me  to  "The  Three  Tuns,"  and 
let 's  have  an  honest  pint  and  an  honest  pipe 
together.  I  don't  care  about  cigars.  Come 
to-night.  Let's  make  a  night  of  it.  We'll 
begin  at  "The  Three  Tuns,"  then  call  at 
"  The  Blue  Posts,"  look  in  at  "  The  Dog  and 
Fire-irons,"  and  finish  up  at  "The  Shake- 
speare's Head."  What  was  it  we  used  to 
troll  ?— 

'  From  tavern  to  tavern 

Youth  passes  along, 

With  an  armful  of  girl 

And  a  heart-full  of  song.'" 

'  Hush ! '  I  cried  in  terror ;  '  it  is  impossible. 
I  cannot.  Come  to  my  club  instead.'  But 
he  shook  his  head. 

I  persuaded  him  to  have  some  Chianti  at 
last,  but  he  drank  it  without  spirit,  and  thus 
we  sat  far  into  the  night  talking  of  old  days. 

Before  he  went  I  made  him  a  definite  offer 
— he  must  have  bewitched  me,  I  am  sure — 
I  offered  him  no  less  than  £5,000  and  a  share 


THE  APPARITION  OF  YOUTH     177 

in  the  business  for  the  sprig  of  almond - 
blossom  the  ridiculous  young  pagan  carried 
in  his  hat. 

And  will  you  believe  me  ?     He  declined 
the  offer. 


THE  PATHETIC  FLOURISH 

THE  dash  under  the  signature,  the  unneces- 
sary rat-tat  of  the  visitor,  the  extravagant 
angle  of  the  hat  in  bowing,  the  extreme 
unction  in  the  voice,  the  business  man's 
importance,  the  strut  of  the  cock,  the  swagger 
of  the  bad  actor,  the  long  hair  of  the  poet, 
the  Salvation  bonnet,  the  blue  shirt  of  the 
Socialist :  against  all  these,  and  a  hundred 
examples  of  the  swagger  of  unreflecting  life, 
did  a  little  brass  knocker  in  Gray's  Inn  warn 
me  the  other  evening.  I  had  knocked  as 
no  one  should  who  is  not  a  postman,  with 
somewhat  of  a  flourish.  I  had  plainly  said, 
in  its  metallic  reverberations,  that  I  was  some- 
body. As  I  left  my  friends,  I  felt  the  knocker 
looking  at  me,  and  when  I  came  out  into  the 
great  square,  framing  the  heavens  like  an 
astronomical  chart,  the  big  stars  repeated  the 
lesson  with  thousand-fold  iteration.  How 

178 


THE  PATHETIC   FLOURISH     179 

they  seemed  to  nudge  each  other  and  twinkle 
among  themselves  at  the  poor  ass  down  there, 
who  actually  took  himself  and  his  doings  so 
seriously  as  to  flourish,  even  on  a  little  brass 
knocker. 

Yes,  I  had  once  again  forgotten  Jupiter. 
How  many  hundred  times  was  he  bigger 
than  the  earth  ?  Never  mind,  there  he  was, 
bright  as  crystal,  for  me  to  measure  my 
importance  against !  The  street-lamps  did 
their  best,  I  observed,  to  brave  it  out,  and 
the  electric  lights  in  Holborn  seemed  cer- 
tainly to  have  the  best  of  it — as  cheap  jewel- 
lery is  gaudiest  in  its  glitter.  One  could  much 
more  easily  believe  that  all  these  hansoms 
with  their  jewelled  eyes,  these  pretty,  saucily 
frocked  women  with  theirs,  this  busy  glitter- 
ing milky  way  of  human  life  was  the  endur- 
ing, and  those  dimmed  uncertain  points  up 
yonder  but  the  reflections  of  human  gas-lights. 

A  city  clerk,  with  shining  evening  hat, 
went  by,  his  sweetheart  on  his  arm.  They 
were  wending  gaily  to  the  theatre,  without  a 
thought  of  all  the  happy  people  who  had 
done  the  same  long  ago — hasting  down  the 
self-same  street,  to  the  self-same  theatre,  with 


i8o  PROSE    FANCIES 

the  very  same  sweet  talk — all  long  since 
mouldering  in  their  graves.  I  felt  I  ought  to 
rush  up  and  shake  them,  take  them  into  a  by- 
street, turn  their  eyes  upon  Jupiter,  and  tell 
them  they  must  die  ;  but  I  thought  it  might 
spoil  the  play  for  them. 

Besides,  there  were  so  many  hundreds  in 
the  streets  I  should  have  to  address  in  the 
same  way  :  formidable  people,  too,  clad  in  re- 
spectability as  in  a  coat  of  mail.  The  pomp- 
ous policeman  yonder :  I  longed  to  go  and 
say  to  him  that  there  had  been  policemen 
before ;  that  he  was  only  the  ephemeral 
example  of  a  world-old  type,  and  needn't 
take  himself  so  seriously.  It  was  an  irresis- 
tible temptation  to  ask  him  :  '  Canst  thou 
bind  the  sweet  influences  of  Pleiades,  or 
loose  the  bands  of  Orion  ?  Canst  thou  bring 
forth  Mazzaroth  in  his  season  ?  Or  canst 
thou  guide  Arcturus  with  his  sons  ? '  But  I 
forbore,  and  just  then,  glancing  into  an  oyster 
shop,  I  was  fascinated  by  the  oysterman.  He 
was  rapidly  opening  a  dozen  for  a  new 
customer,  and  wore  the  while  the  solemnest 
face  I  ever  saw.  Oysters  were  so  evidently, 
so  pathetically,  all  the  world  to  him.  All  his 


THE  PATHETIC  FLOURISH     181 

surroundings  suggested  oysters,  legends  of 
their  prices  and  qualities  made  the  art  on  his 
walls,  printed  price-lists  on  his  counter  made 
his  literature,  the  prospects  and  rivalries  of 
trade  made  his  politics  :  oysters  were,  in 
fact,  his  raison  d'etre.  His  associations  from 
boyhood  had  been  oysters,  I  felt  certain  that 
his  relatives,  even  his  ancestors,  must  be 
oysters,  too  ;  and  that  if  he  had  any  idea  of 
a  supreme  being,  it  must  take  the  form  of  an 
oyster.  Indeed,  a  sort  of  nightmare  seemed 
suddenly  to  take  possession  of  the  world, 
in  which  alternately  policemen  swallowed 
oysters  and  oysters  policemen.  How  sad  it 
all  was — that  masterly  flourish  of  the  knife 
with  which  the  oysterman  ruthlessly  hurried 
dozen  after  dozen  into  eternity  ;  that  defer- 
ential '  Sir '  in  his  voice  to  every  demand  of 
his  customer  ;  that  brisk  alacrity  with  which 
he  bid  his  assistant  bring  'the  gentleman's 
half-stout.' 

There  seemed  a  world  of  tears  in  these 
simple  operations,  and  the  plain  oysterman 
had  grown  suddenly  mystical  as  an  astro- 
logical symbol.  And,  indeed,  there  was 
planetary  influence  in  the  thing,  for  there 


182  PROSE    FANCIES 

was  Jupiter  high  above  us,  sneering  at  our 
little  world  of  policemen  and  oystermen. 

His  grin  disagreeably  reminded  me — had 
I  not  myself  that  very  night  ignorantly  flour- 
ished on  a  brass  knocker  ? 

It  is  so  hard  to  remember  the  respect  we 
owe  to  death.  Yet  for  me  there  is  always  a 
feeling  that  if  we  direct  our  lives  cautiously, 
with  proportionate  seriousness  and  no  more, 
not  presuming  on  life  as  our  natural  birthright, 
but  taking  it  with  simple  thankfulness  as  a 
boon  which  we  have  done  nothing  to  deserve, 
and  which  may  be  snatched  from  us  before 
our  next  breath  :  that,  if  we  so  order  our  days, 
Death  may  respect  our  humility. 

'  The  lusty  lord,  rejoicing  in  his  pride, 

He  draweth  down  ;  before  the  armed  knight 
With  jingling  bridle-rein  he  still  doth  ride  ; 
He  crosseth  the  strong  captain  in  the  fight ' ; 

but  such  are  proud  people,  arrogant  in  beauty 
and  strength.  With  a  humble  person,  who 
is  careful  not  to  flourish  beneath  his  signature, 
who  knocks  just  as  much  as  he  means  on  the 
knocker,  bows  just  as  much  as  he  respects, 
smiles  cautiously,  and  never  fails  to  touch  his 


THE  PATHETIC  FLOURISH     183 

hat  to  the  King  of  Terrors — may  he  not  deal 
more  gently  with  such  a  one  ? 

And  yet  Death  is  not  a  pleasant  companion 
at  Life's  feast,  however  kindly  disposed.  One 
cannot  quite  trust  him,  and  he  doesn't  go 
well  with  flowers.  Perhaps,  after  all,  they 
are  wisest  who  forget  him,  and  happy  indeed 
are  they  who  have  not  yet  caught  sight  of  him 
grinning  to  himself  among  the  green  branches 
of  their  Paradise. 

Yes,  it  is  good  that  youth  should  go  with  a 
feather  in  his  cap,  that  spring  should  garland 
herself  with  blossom,  and  love's  vows  make 
light  of  death.  He  is  a  bad  companion  for 
young  people.  But  for  older  folk  the  wisdom 
of  that  knocker  in  Gray's  Inn  applies. 


A  TAVERN  NIGHT 

LOOKING  back,  in  weak  moments,  we  are 
sometimes  heard  to  say :  '  After  all,  youth  was 
a  great  fool.  Look  at  the  tinsel  he  was  sure 
was  solid  gold.  Can  you  imagine  it  ?  This 
tawdry  tinkling  bit  of  womanhood,  a  silly 
doll  that  says  "  Don't "  when  you  squeeze  it, 
— he  actually  mistook  her  for  a  goddess.' 
Ah  !  reader,  don't  you  wish  you  could  make 
such  a  splendid  mistake  ?  I  do.  I  'd  give 
anything  to  be  once  more  sitting  before  the 
footlights  for  the  first  time,  with  the  wonder- 
ful overture  just  beginning  to  steal  through 
my  senses. 

Ah !  violins,  whither  would  you  take  my 
soul  ?  You  call  to  it  like  the  voice  of  one 
waiting  by  the  sea,  bathed  in  sunset.  Why 
do  you  call  me  ?  What  are  these  wonderful 
things  you  are  whispering  to  my  soul  ?  You 
promise — ah !  what  things  you  promise, 
strange  voices  of  the  string  ! 

184 


A    TAVERN    NIGHT        185 

O  sirens,  have  pity !  It  is  the  soul  of  a 
boy  comes  out  to  meet  you.  His  heart  is 
pure,  his  body  sweet  as  apples.  Oh,  be 
faithful,  betray  him  not,  beautiful  voices  of 
the  wondrous  world ! 

David  and  I  sat  together  in  a  theatre.  The 
overture  had  succeeded.  Our  souls  had 
followed  it  over  the  footlights,  and,  floating 
in  the  limelight,  shone  there  awaiting  the 
fulfilment  of  the  promise.  The  play  was 
'Pygmalion  and  Galatea.'  I  almost  forget 
now  how  the  scenes  go,  I  only  know  that  at 
the  appearance  of  Galatea  we  knew  that  the 
overture  had  not  lied.  There,  in  dazzling 
white  flesh,  was  all  it  had  promised  ;  and 
when  she  called  '  Pyg-ma-lion ! '  how  our 
hearts  thumped !  for  we  knew  it  was  really 
us  she  was  calling. 

'  Pyg-ma-lion  ! '  '  Pyg-ma-lion  ! ' 

It  was  as  though  Cleopatra  called  us  from 
the  tomb. 

Our  hands  met.  We  could  hear  each 
other's  blood  singing.  And  was  not  the 
play  itself  an  allegory  of  our  coming  lives  ? 
Did  not  Galatea  symbolise  all  the  sleeping 
beauty  of  the  world  that  was  to  awaken 


186  PROSE    FANCIES 

warm  and  fragrant  at  the  kiss  of  our  youth  ? 
And  somewhere,  too,  shrouded  in  enchanted 
quiet,  such  a  white  white  woman  waited  for 
our  kiss. 

In  a  vision  we  saw  life  like  the  treasure 
cave  of  the  Arabian  thief,  and  we  said  to 
our  beating  hearts  that  we  had  the  secret  of 
the  magic  word :  that  the  '  Open  Sesame ' 
was  youth. 

No  fall  of  the  curtain  could  hide  the  vision 
from  our  young  eyes.  It  transfigured  the 
faces  of  our  fellow-pittites,  it  made  another 
stage  of  the  embers  of  the  sunset,  a  distant 
bridge  of  silver  far  down  the  street.  Then  we 
took  it  with  us  to  the  tavern  :  and,  as  I  think 
of  the  solemn  libations  of  that  night,  I  know 
not  whether  to  laugh  or  cry.  Doubtless,  you 
will  do  the  laughing  and  I  the  crying. 

We  had  got  our  own  corner.  Turning 
down  the  gas,  the  fire  played  at  day  and 
night  with  our  faces.  Imagine  us  in  one  of 
the  flashes,  solemnly  raising  our  glasses, 
hands  clasped  across  the  table,  earnest 
gleaming  eyes  holding  each  other  above  it. 
'  Old  man  !  some  day,  somewhere,  a  woman 
like  that ! ' 


A    TAVERN    NIGHT        187 

There  was  still  a  sequel.  At  home  at  last 
and  in  bed,  how  could  I  sleep?  It  seemed 
as  if  I  had  got  into  a  rosy  sunset  cloud  in 
mistake  for  my  bed.  The  candle  was  out, 
and  yet  the  room  was  full  of  rolling  light 

I  '11  swear  I  could  have  seen  to  read  by  it, 
whatever  it  was. 

It  was  no  use.  I  must  get  up.  I  struck  a 
light,  and  in  a  moment  was  deep  in  the 
composition  of  a  fiery  sonnet.  It  was 
evidently  that  which  had  caused  all  the 
phosphorescence.  But  a  sonnet  is  a  mere 
pill-box.  It  holds  nothing.  A  mere  cockle- 
shell. And,  oh  !  the  raging  sea  it  could  not 
hold !  Besides,  being  confessedly  an  art- 
form,  duly  licensed  to  lie,  it  is  apt  to  be 
misunderstood.  It  could  not  say  in  plain 
English,  '  Meet  me  at  the  pier  to-morrow  at 
three  in  the  afternoon ' ;  it  could  make  no 
assignation  nearer  than  the  Isles  of  the  Blest, 
'  after  life's  fitful  fever.'  Therefore,  it  seemed 
well  to  add  a  postscript  to  that  effect  in 
prose. 

And  then,  how  was  she  to  receive  it? 
Needless  to  say,  there  was  nothing  to  be 
hoped  from  the  post ;  and  I  should  have  said 


i88  PROSE    FANCIES 

before  that  Tyre  and  Sidon  face  each  other 
on  opposite  sides  of  the  river,  and  that 
my  home  was  in  Sidon,  three  miles  from 
the  ferry. 

Likewise,  it  was  now  nearing  three  in  the 
morning.  Just  time  to  catch  the  half-past 
three  boat,  run  up  to  the  theatre,  a  mile 
away,  and  meet  the  return  boat.  So  down 
down  through  the  creaking  house,  gingerly, 
as  though  I  were  a  Jason  picking  my  way 
among  the  coils  of  the  sleeping  dragon. 
Soon  I  was  shooting  along  the  phantom 
streets,  like  Mercury  on  a  message  through 
Hades. 

At  last  the  river  came  in  sight,  growing 
slate-colour  in  the  earliest  dawn.  I  could 
see  the  boat  nuzzling  up  against  the  pier, 
and  snoring  in  its  sleep.  I  said  to  myself 
that  this  was  Styx  and  the  fare  an  obolus. 
As  I  jumped  on  board,  with  hot  face  and 
hotter  heart,  Charon  clicked  his  signal  to 
the  engines,  the  boat  slowly  snuffled  itself 
half  awake,  and  we  shoved  out  into  the 
sleepy  water. 

As  we  crossed,  the  light  grew,  and  the  gas- 
lamps  of  Tyre  beaconed  with  fading  gleam. 


A    TAVERN    NIGHT        189 

Overhead  began  a  restlessness  in  the  clouds, 
as  of  a  giant  drowsily  shuffling  off  some  of 
his  bedclothes  ;  but  as  yet  he  slept,  and  only 
the  silver  bosom  of  his  spouse  the  moon  was 
uncovered. 

When  we  landed,  the  streets  of  Tyre  were 
already  light,  but  empty :  as  though  they 
had  got  up  early  to  meet  some  one  who  had 
not  arrived.  I  sped  through  them  like  a  sea- 
gull that  has  the  harbour  to  itself,  and  was 
not  long  in  reaching  the  theatre.  How 
desolate  the  playbills  looked  that  had  been 
so  companionable  but  two  or  three  hours  be- 
fore. And  there  was  her  photograph ! 
Surely  it  was  an  omen.  Ah,  my  angel ! 
See,  I  am  bringing  you  my  heart  in  a  song 
'  All  my  heart  in  this  my  singing  ! ' 

I  dropped  the  letter  into  the  box  :  but,  as 
I  turned  away,  momentarily  glancing  up  the 
long  street,  I  caught  sight  of  an  approaching 
figure  that  could  hardly  be  mistaken.  Good 
Heavens!  it  was  David,  and  he  too  was 
carrying  a  letter. 


SANDRA    BELLONI'S 
PINEWOOD 

(TO  THE  SWEET  MEMORY  OF  FRANCES  WYNNE) 

I  FELT  jaded  and  dusty,  I  needed  flowers 
and  sunshine ;  and  remembering  that  some 
one  had  told  me — erroneously,  I  have  since 
discovered  ! — that  the  pinewood  wherein 
Sandra  Belloni  used  to  sing  to  her  harp, 
like  a  nixie,  in  the  moonlit  nights,  lay  near 
Oxshott  in  Surrey,  I  vowed  myself  there 
and  then  to  the  Meredithian  pilgrimage. 

The  very  resolution  uplifted  me  with  lyric 
gladness,  and  I  went  swinging  out  of  the  old 
Inn  where  I  live  with  the  heart  of  a  boy. 
Across  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  down  by  the 
Law  Courts,  and  so  to  Waterloo.  I  felt  I 
must  have  a  confidante,  so  I  told  the  slate- 
coloured  pigeons  in  the  square  where  I  was 
off — out  among  the  thrushes,  the  broom, 
and  the  may.  But  they  wouldn't  come. 

190 


SANDRA  BELLONI'S  PINEWOOD   191 

They  evidently  deemed  that  a  legal  purlieu 
was  a  better  place  for  '  pickings.' 

Half-a-crown  return  to  Oxshott  and  a 
train  at  12.35.  You  know  the  ride  better 
than  I,  probably,  and  what  Surrey  is  at  the 
beginning  of  June.  The  first  gush  of  green 
on  our  getting  clear  of  Clapham  was  like 
the  big  drink  after  an  afternoon's  hay- 
making. There  was  but  one  cloud  on  the 
little  journey.  She  got  into  the  next 
carriage. 

I  dreamed  all  the  way.  On  arriving  at 
Oxshott  I  immediately  became  systematic. 
Having  a  very  practical  belief  in  the  material 
basis  of  all  exquisite  experience,  I  simply 
nodded  to  the  great  pinewoods  half  a  mile 
off,  on  the  brow  of  long  heathy  downs  to 
the  left  of  the  railway  bridge — as  who  should 
say,  '  I  shall  enjoy  you  all  the  better 
presently  for  some  sandwiches  and  a  pint  of 
ale ' — and  promptly,  not  to  say  scientifically, 
turned  down  the  Oxshott  road  in  search  of 
an  inn. 

Oxshott  is  a  quaint  little  hamlet,  one  of 
the  hundred  villages  where  we  are  going  to 
live  when  we  have  written  great  novels  ;  but 


192  PROSE    FANCIES 

I  didn't  care  for  the  village  inn,  so  walked  a 
quarter  of  a  mile  nearer  Leatherhead,  till 
the  Old  Bear  came  in  sight 

There  I  sat  in  the  drowsy  parlour,  the 
humming  afternoon  coming  in  at  the  door, 
'the  blue  fly*  singing  on  the  hot  pane, 
dreaming  all  kinds  of  gauzy-winged  dreams, 
while  my  body  absorbed  ham  sandwiches 
and  some  excellent  ale.  Of  course  I  did 
not  leave  the  place  without  the  inevitable 
reflection  on  Lamb  and  the  inns  he  had 
immortalised.  Outside  again  my  thoughts 
were  oddly  turned  to  the  nature  of  my 
expedition  by  two  figures  in  the  road — an 
unhappy-looking  couple,  evidently  '  belonging 
to  each  other,'  the  young  woman  with  babe 
at  breast,  trudging  together  side  by  side — 

*  One  was  a  girl  with  a  babe  that  throve, 

Her  ruin  and  her  bliss  ; 
One  was  a  youth  with  a  lawless  love, 
Who  claspt  it  the  more  for  this. ' 

The  quotation  was  surely  inevitable  for 
any  one  who  knows  Mr.  Meredith's  tragic 
little  picture  of '  The  Meeting.' 

Thus  I  was  brought  to  think  of  Sandra 
again,  and  of  the  night  when  the  Brookfield 


SANDRA  BELLONI'S  PINEWOOD   193 

ladies  had  heard  her  singing  like  a  spirit  in 
the  heart  of  the  moon-dappled  pinewood, 
and  impresario  Pericles  had  first  prophesied 
the  future  prima  donna. 

Do  you  remember  his  inimitable  out- 
burst ? — '  I  am  made  my  mind !  I  send 
her  abroad  to  ze  Academie  for  one,  two, 
tree  year.  She  shall  be  instructed  as  was 
not  before.  Zen  a  noise  at  La  Scala. 
No — Paris  !  No — London  !  She  shall 
astonish  London  fairst  Yez !  if  I  take  a 
theatre !  Yez !  if  I  buy  a  newspaper ! 
Yez  !  if  I  pay  feefty-sossand  pound  ! ' 

Of  course,  as  one  does,  I  had  gone 
expecting  to  distinguish  the  actual  sandy 
mound  among  the  firs  where  she  sat  with 
her  harp,  the  young  countryman  waiting 
close  by  for  escort,  and  the  final  'Giles 
Scroggins,  native  British,  beer-begotten  air' 
with  which  she  rewarded  him  for  his  patience 
in  suffering  so  much  classical  music.  Mr. 
Meredith  certainly  gives  a  description  of  the 
spot  close  enough  for  identification,  with  time 
and  perseverance.  But,  reader,  I  had  gone  out 
this  afternoon  in  the  interest  rather  of  fresh 
air  than  of  sentimental  topography;  and  it  was 
N 


194  PROSE  FANCIES 
quite  enough  for  me  to  feel  that  somewhere 
in  that  great  belt  of  pinewood  it  had  all  been 
true,  and  that  it  was  through  those  fir- 
branches  and  none  other  in  the  world  that 
that  '  sleepy  fire  of  early  moonlight '  had  so 
wonderfully  hung. 

After  crossing  the  railway  bridge  the  road 
rises  sharply  for  a  few  yards,  and  then  a 
whole  stretch  of  undulating  woodland  is 
before  one  :  to  the  right  bosky  green,  but  on 
the  left  a  rough  dark  heath  with  a  shaggy 
wilderness  of  pine  for  background,  heightened 
here  and  there  with  a  sudden  surprise  of 
gentle  silver  birch.  How  freshly  the  wind 
met  one  at  the  top  of  the  road  :  a  south- 
west wind  soft  and  blithe  enough  to  have 
blown  through  '  Diana  of  the  Crossways.' 

'You  saucy  south    wind,   setting  all    the   budded  beech 

boughs  swinging 

Above  the  wood  anemones  that  flutter,  flushed  and  white, 
When  far  across  the  wide  salt  waves  your  quick  way  you 

were  winging, 

Oh  !  tell  me,  tell  me,  did  you  pass  my  sweetheart's  ship  last 
night  ? 

Ah  !  let  the  daisies  be, 
South  wind  !  and  answer  me  ; 
Did  you  my  sailor  see  ? 
Wind,  whisper  very  low, 
For  none  but  you  must  know 
I  love  my  lover  so.' 


SANDRA  BELLONI'S  PINEWOOD   195 

I  had  been  keeping  that  question  to  ask  it 
for  two  or  three  days,  since  a  good  friend 
had  told  me  of  some  lyrics  by  Miss  Frances 
Wynne  ;  and  the  little  volume,  charmingly 
entitled  Whisper,  was  close  under  my  arm 
as  I  turned  from  the  road  across  the  heath — 
a  wild  scramble  of  scrubby  chance-children, 
wind-sown  from  the  pines  behind.  And 
then  presently,  like  a  much  greater  person, 
'  I  found  me  in  a  gloomy  wood  astray.' 

But  I  soon  realised  that  it  wasn't  the  day 
for  pinewoods,  however  rich  in  associations. 
Dark  days  are  their  opportunity.  Then  one 
is  in  sympathy.  But  on  days  when  the 
sunshine  is  poured  forth  like  yellow  wine, 
when  the  broom  is  ablaze,  and  the  sky  blue 
as  particular  eyes,  the  contrast  of  those  dark 
aisles  without  one  green  blade  is  uncanny. 
Its  listening  loneliness  almost  frightens  one. 
Brurrhh  !  One  must  find  a  greenwood  where 
things  are  companionable  :  birds  within  call, 
butterflies  in  waiting,  and  a  bee  now  and 
again  to  bump  one,  and  be  off  again  with 
a  grumbled  '  Beg  your  pardon.  Confound 
you!'  So  presently  imagine  me  'prone  at 
the  foot  of  yonder '  sappy  chestnut,  nice  little 


196          PROSE    FANCIES 

cushions  of  moss  around  me,  one  for  Whisper, 
one  for  a  pillow ;  above,  a  world  of  luminous 
green  leaves,  filtered  sunlight  lying  about  in 
sovereigns  and  half-sovereigns,  and  at  a 
distance  in  the  open  shine  a  patch  of 
hyacinths,  '  like  a  little  heaven  below.' 

Whisper  \  'Tis,  the  sweetest  little  book  of 
lyrics  since  Mrs.  Dollie  Radford's  Light 
Load.  Whitman,  you  will  remember,  always 
used  to  take  his  songs  out  into  the  presence 
of  the  fields  and  skies  to  try  them.  A  severe 
test,  but  a  little  book  may  bear  it  as  well 
as  a  great  one.  The  Leaves  of  Grass  claims 
measurement  with  oaks ;  but  Whisper  I 
tried  by  speedwell  and  cinquefoil,  and 
many  other  tiny  sweet  things  for  which  I 
know  no  name,  by  all  airs  and  sounds 
coming  to  me  through  the  wood,  quaint 
little  notes  of  hidden  birds, — and  the  songs 
were  just  as  much  at  home  there  as  the 
rest,  because  they  also  had  grown  out  of 
Nature's  heart,  and  were  as  much  hers  as 
any  leaf  or  bird.  So  I  dotted  speedwell  all 
amongst  them,  because  I  felt  they  ought  to 
know  each  other. 

I  wonder  if  you  love  to  fill  your  books 


SANDRA  BELLONI'S  PINEWOOD   197 

with  flowers.  It  is  a  real  bookish  delight, 
and  they  make  such  a  pretty  diary.  My 
poets  are  full  of  them,  and  they  all  mean  a 
memory — old  spring  mornings,  lost  sunsets, 
walks  forgotten  and  unforgotten.  Here  a 
buttercup  pressed  like  finely  beaten  brass, 
there  a  great  yellow  rose — in  my  Keats ;  my 
Chaucer  is  like  his  old  meadows,  '  ypoudred 
with  daisie,'  and  my  Herrick  is  full  of  violets. 
The  only  thing  is  that  they  haunt  me 
sometimes.  But  then,  again,  they  bloom 
afresh  every  spring.  As  Mr.  Monkhouse 
sings : — 

'  Sweet  as  the  rose  that  died  last  year  is  the  rose  that  is 
born  to-day.' 

But  I  grow  melancholy  with  an  Englishman's 
afterthought,  for  I  coined  no  such  reflections 
dreaming  there  in  the  wood.  It  is  only  on 
paper  that  one  moralises — just  where  one 
shouldn't. 

My  one  or  two  regrets  were  quite  practical 
— that  I  had  not  learnt  botany  at  school,  and 
that  the  return  train  went  so  early. 


WHITE    SOUL 

WHAT  is  so  white  in  the  world,  my  love, 

As  thy  maiden  soul — 

The  dove  that  flies 

Softly  all  day  within  thine  eyes, 

And  nests  within  thine  heart  at  night  ? 

Nothing  so  white. 

ONE  has  heard  poets  speak  of  a  quill 
dropped  from  an  angel's  wing.  That  is  the 
kind  of  nib  of  which  I  feel  in  need  to-night. 
If  I  could  but  have  it  just  for  to-night  only, 
— I  would  willingly  bequeath  it  to  the  British 
Museum  to-morrow.  As  a  rule  I  am  very 
well  satisfied  with  the  particular  brand  of  gilt 
'  J  '  with  which  I  write  to  the  dictation  of  the 
Muse  of  Daily  Bread  ;  but  to-night  it  is 
different.  Though  it  come  not,  I  must  make 
ready  to  receive  a  loftier  inspiration.  Whitest 
paper,  newest  pen,  ear  sensitive,  tremulous  ; 
heart  pure  and  mind  open,  broad  and  clear  as 
the  blue  air  for  the  most  delicate  gossamer 
thoughts  to  wing  through  ;  and  snow-white 
words,  lily-white  words,  words  of  ivory  and 

198 


WHITE    SOUL  199 

pearl,  words  of  silver  and  alabaster,  words 
white  as  hawthorn  and  daisy,  words  white  as 
morning  milk,  words  'whiter  than  Venus' 
doves,  and  softer  than  the  down  beneath  their 
wings  ' — virginal,  saintlike,  nunnery  words. 

It  maybe  because  I  love  White  Soul  that  I 
think  her  the  fairest  blossom  on  the  Tree  of 
Life,  yet  a  child  said  of  her  to  its  mother,  the 
other  day  :  '  Look  at  White  Soul's  face — it 
is  as  though  it  were  lit  up  from  inside ! ' 
Children,  if  they  don't  always  tell  the  truth, 
seldom  tell  lies  ;  and  I  always  think  that  the 
praise  of  children  is  better  worth  having  than 
the  Cross  of  the  Legion  of  Honour.  They  are 
the  only  critics  from  whom  praise  is  not  to 
be  bought.  As  animals  are  said  to  see  spirits, 
children  have,  I  think,  an  eye  for  souls.  It  is 
so  easy  to  have  an  eye  for  beautiful  surfaces. 
Such  eyes  are  common  enough.  An  eye  for 
beautiful  souls  is  rarer  ;  and,  unless  you 
possess  that  eye  for  souls,  you  waste  your 
time  on  White  Soul.  She  has,  of  course,  her 
external  attractions,  dainty  features,  refined 
contours  ;  but  these  it  would  not  be  difficult 
to  match  in  any  morning's  walk.  It  is  when 
she  smiles  that  her  face,  it  seems  to  me,  is 


200          PROSE    FANCIES 

one  of  the  most  wonderful  in  the'world.  Till 
she  smiles,  it  is  like  the  score  of  some  great 
composer's  song  before  the  musician  releases 
it  warbling  for  joy  along  the  trembling  keys  ; 
it  is  like  the  statue  of  Memnon  before  the 
dawn  steals  to  kiss  it  across  the  desert. 
White  Soul's  face  when  she  smiles  is  made, 
you  would  say,  of  larks  and  dew,  of  nightin- 
gales and  stars. 

She  is  an  eldritch  little  creature,  a  little 
frightening  to  live  with — with  her  gold  flaxen 
hair  that  seems  to  grow  blonder  as  it  nears 
her  head  :  burnt  blonde,  it  would  seem,  with 
the  white  light  of  the  spirit  that  pours  all 
day  long  from  her  brows.  There  is  something, 
as  we  say,  almost  supernatural  about  her — 
'  a  fairy's  child.'  The  gipsies  have  a  share  in 
her  blood,  she  boasts  in  her  naive  way,  and 
with  her  love  for  all  that  is  free  and  lawless 
and  under-the-sky — but  I  always  say  the 
fairies  have  more.  She  is  constantly  saying 
'  Hush  ! '  and  '  Whisht ! '  when  no  one  else 
can  hear  a  sound,  and  she  dreams  the  quaint- 
est of  dreams. 

Once  she  woke  sobbing  in  the  night  and 
told  her  husband,  who  knew  her  ways  and 


WHITE    SOUL  201 

loved  her  tenfold  for  them,  that  she  had 
dreamed  herself  in  the  old  churchyard,  and 
that  as  the  moon  rose  behind  the  tower,  the 
three  old  men  who  live  in  the  three  yew-trees 
had  come  out  and  played  cards  upon  a  tomb 
in  the  moonlight,  and  one  of  them  had 
beckoned  to  her  and  offered  to  tell  her  fortune. 
It  fell  out  that  she  was  to  die  in  the  spring, 
and  as  he  held  up  the  fatal  card,  the  old  man 
had  leered  at  her — and  then  a  cock  crew, 
all  three  vanished,  and  she  awoke. 

Her  dreams  are  nearly  all  about  dying,  and, 
though  she  is  obviously  robust,  there  is  that 
transparent  ethereal  look  in  her  face,  which 
makes  old  women  say  '  she  is  not  long  for 
this  world,'  that  fateful  beauty  which  creates 
an  atmosphere  of  doom  about  it.  You  cannot 
look  at  her  without  a  queer  involuntary  feel- 
ing that  she  was  born  to  die  in  some  tragic 
way.  She  reminds  one  of  those  perilously 
fragile  vases  we  feel  must  get  broken,  those 
rarely  delicate  flowers  we  feel  cannot  have 
strong  healthy  roots. 

She  is  one  of  those  who  seem  born  to  see 
terrible  things,  monstrous  accidents,  super- 
natural appearances.  She  has  seen  death 


202          PROSE    FANCIES 

and  birth  in  strange  uncanny  forms  ;  and 
she  has  met  with  unearthly  creatures  in  the 
lonely  corners  of  rooms.  She  is  a  '  seventh- 
month  child,'  and  '  seventh-month  children  ' 
always  see  things,'  she  says,  with  a  funny 
little  sententious  shake  of  her  head. 

Yet,  with  all  this,  she  is  the  sunniest,  healthi- 
est, most  domestic  little  soul  that  breathes ; 
and  no  doubt  the  materialist  would  be  right  in 
saying  that  all  this  '  spirituelle '  nonsense  is 
but  a  trick  of  her  transparent  blonde  com- 
plexion, a  chance  quality  in  the  colour  of 
her  great  luminous  eyes. 

Like  all  women,  she  was  most  wonderful 
just  before  the  birth  of  her  first  child,  a 
little  changeling  creature  wild-eyed  as  her 
fairy  mother.  How  she  made  believe  with 
the  little  fairy  vestments,  the  elfin-shirts, 
the  pixy-frocks — long  before  it  was  time  for 
the  tiny  body  to  step  inside  them  ;  how  she 
talked  to  the  unborn  soul  that  none  but  she 
as  yet  could  see.  And  all  the  time  she  '  knew ' 
she  was  going  to  die,  that  she  would  never 
see  the  little  immortal  that  was  about  to  put 
on  our  mortality :  '  people '  had  told  her  so 
in  her  dreams  at  night, — doubtless  '  the  good 


WHITE    SOUL  203 

people,'  the  fairies.  Those  who  loved  her 
grew  almost  to  believe  her — she  looks  so  like 
a  little  Sibyl  when  she  says  such  things — yet 
her  little  one  came  almost  without  a  cry,  and 
in  a  few  days  the  fairy  mother  was  once  more 
glinting  about  the  house  like  a  sunbeam. 

Well !  well !  I  cannot  make  you  see  her 
as  I  know  her :  that  I  fear  is  certain.  You 
might  meet  her,  yet  never  know  1  er  from  my 
description.  If  you  wait  for  the  coarse  arti- 
culation of  words  you  might  well  '  miss  '  her  ; 
for  her  qualities  are  not  histrionic,  they  have 
no  notion  of  making  the  best  of  themselves. 
They  remain,  so  to  speak,  in  nuggets ;  they 
are  minted  into  no  current  coin  of  fleeting 
fashion  and  shallow  accomplishment.  But  if 
a  face  can  mean  more  to  you  than  the  whole 
of  Johnson's  Dictionary,  and  the  Encyclopedia 
Britannica  to  boot,  if  a  strain  of  music  can 
convey  to  you  the  thrill  of  human  life,  with  its 
heights  and  depths  and  romantic  issues  and 
possibilities,  as  Gibbon  and  Grote  can  never 
do — come  and  worship  White  Soul's  face  with 
me.  Some  women's  faces  are  like  diamonds 
— they  look  their  best  in  artificial  lights ; 
White  Soul's  face  is  bright  with  the  soft 


204  PROSE   FANCIES 

brightness  of  a  flower — a  flower  tumbled  with 
dew,  and  best  seen  in  the  innocent  lights  of 
dawn.  Dear  face  without  words  ! 

And  if  there  are  those  who  can  look  on  that 
face  without  being  touched  by  its  strange 
spiritual  loveliness,  without  seeing  in  it  one  of 
those  clear  springs  that  bubble  up  from  the 
eternal  beauty,  there  must  indeed  be  many 
who  would  miss  the  soul  for  which  her  face  is 
but  the  ivory  gate,  who  xvould  never  know 
how  white  is  all  within,  never  see  or  hear 
that  holy  dove. 

But  I  have  seen  and  heard,  and  I  know  that 
if  God  should  covet  White  Soul  and  steal  her 
from  me,  her  memory  would  ever  remain  with 
me  as  one  of  those  eternal  realities  of  the  spirit 
to  which  '  realities '  of  flesh  and  blood,  of  wood 
and  stone,  are  but  presumptuous  shadows. 

I  am  not  worthy  of  White  Soul.  Indeed, 
just  to  grow  more  worthy  of  her  was  I  put 
into  the  world. 


A     000493461     8 


"ME  BOOKS 
7°>  '-*  W.  «TH  8r 


